Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on Friday announced the repeal of federal regulations that he said have led to “corrupt medical judgment” by allowing specific patient treatments to be financially incentivized.
In a video message posted to social media, Kennedy asked Americans: “Should doctors make decisions based upon what’s best for their patients or based upon what makes them the most money?”
“It’s not a tough question, but we’ve inherited a healthcare system that constantly pushes doctors toward the latter,” he said. “It rewards certain treatments, not because they’re better for the patient, but because someone profits.”
Kennedy used the example of what occurred after the outbreak of COVID-19.
“Hospitals were paid to report staff vaccination rates,” he said. “Those numbers were fed into the National Healthcare Safety Network, then published on the CDC website to shame any hospital that refused to become an enforcer of federal vaccine mandates.”
“Today, I’m proud to announce we’ve eliminated that policy by repealing a dangerous Biden-era provision in the CMS [Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services] inpatient payment rule,” the secretary declared.
In an Aug. 1 press statement about the repeal of the policy, HHS noted the rule produced “an incentive that was coercive and denied informed consent.”
CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz also observed that doctors and other healthcare providers “should have the same autonomy to choose what’s right for their own individual health care needs as the patients for whom they care.”
“Today’s announcement helps put that power back in their hands,” Oz asserted.
But Kennedy said in his video message that HHS is “not stopping there.”
“We’re scanning every corner of the health care system for hidden incentives and corrupt medical judgment,” he continued. “And what we’re finding is alarming. Doctors are being paid to vaccinate, not to evaluate. They’re pressured to follow the money, not the science.”
HHS and CMS have recently discovered that “more than 36,000 doctors had their Medicare reimbursements altered based upon childhood vaccination rates,” Kennedy explained. “That’s not medicine. That’s coercion. It’s immoral. It has no place in a constitutional democracy or in a system that claims to protect children.”
Kennedy had previously referred to pediatricians who receive financial bonuses from insurers for vaccinating children.
Retired pediatrician Dr. Paul Thomas revealed his own experiences with the health insurer bonuses that, he said, incentivize pediatricians to pressure parents for greater vaccine compliance.
In the “Pediatric Perspectives” segment of Children’s Health Defense’s podcast Good Morning CHD, Thomas interviewed Dr. Ben Edwards and Polly Tommey on May 3 on the subject of “breaking down measles misinformation.”
During the segment, Thomas explained how pediatricians receive bonuses from health insurance companies in exchange for giving more vaccines.
“Now, there’s good pediatricians and there’s not-so-good pediatricians,” the physician began. “So, the first thing I want to remind our audience is that as a pediatrician, you get bonuses for vaccinating children. Pediatricians will deny it, but we get paid so much money for vaccinating that, for practices today, if you’re on an insurance model, [they] would not survive without the vaccines.”
Thomas said this incentivization plan works by pediatricians purchasing vaccines wholesale, and then selling them at a retail price.
“Now, the markup’s not great. It may be three to five dollars per dose,” he explained. “But when you’re doing thousands and thousands of vaccines, you know, every year, if not every month, that adds up to quite a bit of money. The big bonus is called the ‘admin fee.’”
“So, for every antigen, so the MMR – measles, mumps, rubella – is three vaccines in one,” Thomas continued. “The average, I would say on the contracts – and every contract’s different – is about $40 for the first antigen, $20 for each subsequent antigen at the one-year-old visit, and also at the six-month visit now, and now that they’ve added COVID and flu, there’s 10 different antigens. So, add that up – it’s hundreds of dollars. And you get to do this at two months, four months, six months, again at 12 or 15 months, at 18 months.”
Just on the “admin fee alone,” Thomas said, pediatricians could make “over $1,000 per baby.”
“So, you can imagine the lost income when these families are not vaccinating,” he observed.
In April 2023, Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky posted an Anthem Blue Cross/Blue Shield COVID-19 Vaccine Provider Incentive Program agreement – available to doctors who offered the COVID-19 shot in his home state.
“Your primary care provider was bribed to suggest you should take the COVID vaccine,” Massie posted to X.
Anthem stated in its program description: “As a participating practice in the COVID-19 Provider Vaccine Incentive program, we recognize your hard work by offering incentives for helping patients make the choice to become vaccinated. Vaccine results will be determined by a COVID-19 vaccine claim or by confirmation from the Kentucky Vaccine Registry.”
“If your practice meets the below thresholds for vaccination with at least one dose by September 1, 2021, you will receive the initial incentive payment based on the following rates,” the agreement continued, ultimately revealing that doctors who provided the COVID shot to 75% of their patients who are insured by Anthem would receive a “$125 bonus per vaccinated member.”
In his video message, however, Kennedy rejected such incentivization programs.
Healthcare decisions, he said, “should be made based upon one thing and one thing only: the well-being of the patient, and never on a financial bonus or a government mandate.”
“Patients deserve honest, uncorrupted advice from their doctors,” he said. “Doctors deserve the freedom to use their training and to follow the science and speak the truth without fear of punishment. Doctors should be guided by medical judgment and their Hippocratic Oath, not by financial incentives or government mandates. That’s what this policy change is about, and it’s just the beginning.”
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Author: Susan Berry, Ph.D.
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