U.S. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Targets Vaccine Policy and Medicare Fraud

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., appointed in early 2025, has led a multi‑year effort to reshape childhood immunization policy. Documents reveal he pushed for a $5 billion NIH study of vaccine‑autism links, sought to eliminate the entire schedule, and later scaled back to drop vaccines for six of 17 diseases, working with activist Stefanie Spear and attorney Aaron Siri while facing resistance from agencies and courts.

Kennedy also warned that HHS loses roughly $100 billion each year to fraud. He described schemes in Los Angeles involving fake hospice facilities—sometimes hotel rooms labeled as hospices—where patient information was stolen and used to bill Medicaid for services that never occurred. He alleged individuals from Eastern Europe offered cash or gifts, such as flat‑screen TVs, to obtain patient numbers for fraudulent billing.