National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program

As many of us know, and I'm sure you know more so, in the 70s and 80s, lawsuits against vaccine makers were escalating to the point that manufacturers couldn't obtain affordable insurance and they threatened to stop production entirely.

So the government stepped in here, created the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, sort of a no-fault alternative like car insurance.

People who believe they were harmed by vaccine, can now file a claim to the program without going to court.

Since 1988, 28,000 claims have been filed with the program.

The rest were dismissed.

Critics point to these numbers as vaccines cause widespread harm.

Paul, should the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program be ended, changed, amended? Your thoughts.

All right, so I lived through this.

going to put this in my clinic, actually.

And then I do want to talk about the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, Gabe, because RFK Jr. is trying to nominate some people to join this advisory committee with the intent of adding more, like... causes of vaccine injury, including autism, which in theory could mean that many more people could file claims of injury and basically bankrupt this compensation program out of existence.

And so I wanted to flag this administrative workaround that RFK Jr. seems to be eyeing as a way to really continue the myths and disinformation of like vaccine safety.

Now, this is a very controversial issue, the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.

But if you look at the history of this program, this is a very important program.

And here's the reason why.

It lowered the risk for these companies in a way that made it then again viable for them to get back in the space of developing new vaccines, which is what we want.

Right.

Like many topics in this series, there's a grain of truth wrapped inside a much more complicated story.

In the United States, most routine vaccines are covered under the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, often called the Vaccine Court.

We'll devote an entire future episode to explaining why it exists, how it works, and what misconceptions surround it.

But for now, here's the key idea.

In twenty ten, Congress passed a law that provided medical treatment, health monitoring, and financial compensation to first responders and others exposed to toxin.

The program resembles the no-fault National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program in that people can get government compensation for injuries if they agree not to sue.

The program compensates individuals for economic harm caused by their injuries, including lost earnings and medical costs if they can show they were present within a specified exposure zone between September eleventh, two thousand and one, and May thirtieth 2002.

They can also receive pain and suffering payouts capped at two hundred and fifty thousand dollars per cancer and ninety thousand dollars for other conditions.

Okay, so let's break that down.

So Health and Human Services, which underneath that they have the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program that was created, in 1986 with the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act.

So vaccine manufacturers were given immunity, big mistake and unconstitutional.

As a private citizen, you have the right to petition other private citizens, in this case, a corporation, for damages for injury.