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healthcare
Judge Blocks RFK Jr. From Implementing 'Arbitrary and Capricious' Vaccine Overhaul
One physician and public health expert called the ruling "a much-needed victory for a sane approach to federal vaccine policy that relies on science, not misinformation and conspiracy theories."
Mar 16, 2026
In what advocates called a major victory for public health, a federal judge on Monday temporarily blocked US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from implementing a series of moves that critics have warned would weaken childhood immunization efforts and increase the likelihood of serious disease outbreaks.
US District Judge Brian E. Murphy of Massachusetts, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, invalidated Kennedy's reorganized Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) panel, which was set to meet later this week.
Kennedy—who was confirmed by the Senate last year over the objections of tens of thousands experts and despite being a purveyor of vaccine misinformation—replaced ACIP members with several people with ties to the anti-vaccine movement.
Murphy also blocked the committee's unprecedented changes to US immunization recommendations, writing that the "arbitrary and capricious" move stands in stark contrast with the long established decision-making process he called "a method scientific in nature and codified into law through procedural requirements."
“Unfortunately, the government has disregarded those methods and thereby undermined the integrity of its actions," the judge said.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under Kennedy revised the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) childhood immunization schedule so that fewer vaccines are now universally recommended for all children. The agency also reclassified vaccines that were previously endorsed for all children into categories in which vaccination depends on designated risk groups and consultations with medical professionals, among other changes.
Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia have announced that they would not follow the new CDC immunization recommendations.
Lookie Here! As of now, 29 states + DC, have announced that they are no longer going to follow CDC's recommendations for some or all childhood vaccines.Kennedy is not restoring public trust in science as he said he would. 🧪 www.kff.org/other-health...
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— Princess Vimentin PhD | Cancer Biologist (@princess-vimentin.bsky.social) March 12, 2026 at 11:47 AM
Plaintiffs' attorney Richard Huges IV said in a statement that "this ruling is a momentous step toward restoring science-based vaccine policymaking."
"The judge recognized that the actions of Secretary Kennedy and the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices are not grounded in science and that they are destructive," he added. "We are thrilled that the court has discarded the baseless vaccine schedule changes made by Secretary Kennedy and is blocking the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices from doing further damage to vaccine policy."
Dr. Robert Steinbrook, Health Research Group director at Public Citizen, said in response to the ruling that "Judge Murphy’s decision is a much-needed victory for a sane approach to federal vaccine policy that relies on science, not misinformation and conspiracy theories."
"Kennedy’s hand-picked ACIP has been a national embarrassment, thoroughly lacking in the ability to make careful fact-based decisions," he added. "The judge’s ruling offers a responsible path forward for public health and evidence-based federal vaccine policy.”
RFK Jr. fired all of the legitimate scientific experts on the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and replaced them with unqualified political appointees.A judge just ruled that the new members were not appropriately appointed, so ACIP cannot meet this week to spread more misinformation.
— Elizabeth Jacobs, PhD (@elizabethjacobs.bsky.social) March 16, 2026 at 1:38 PM
Anthony Wright, executive director of the advocacy group Families USA, said in a statement: "When politics override science, our children pay the price. Today’s decision helps ensure that medical evidence—not ideology—guides how we protect kids from preventable diseases."
Wright continued:
Secretary Kennedy’s attempt to remove universal recommendations for routine vaccinations only increased confusion among medical providers and families. The routine vaccines being questioned by HHS are the product of centuries of rigorous science and medicine and are why children today don’t die from measles or suffer the lifelong consequences of diseases we long ago learned to prevent. For a country as large, diverse, and mobile as ours, universal vaccine recommendations are the safest and most effective way to stop outbreaks before they start.
Amid several recent outbreaks, public health officials warned late last year that the United States is close to following Canada in losing its measles elimination status, a deadly and preventable setback many experts attribute to HHS' vaccine-averse policies and practices under Kennedy.
"We commend the court for this ruling, but families should not have to depend on litigation to ensure their child can receive a routine vaccine," Wright said. "Evidence-based medicine keeps children alive and in school. Preventing disease should be the foundation of any healthcare system serious about confronting the next disease outbreak or finding the next cure."
The group Protect Our Care called the decision "a major step in the right direction for children’s health after many setbacks under this administration."
“Most Americans, most states, and now a federal court have rejected the [President Donald] Trump-RFK Jr. scheme to make preventable disease great again among American children while exploding health costs across the country," Protect Our Care president Brad Woodhouse said. "While this ruling is a reprieve from harmful anti-vaccine policy based on nothing but junk science and discredited conspiracies, it’s clear the Trump administration is determined to resuscitate their agenda in a higher court because they care more about their anti-science agenda than keeping kids healthy.”
Indeed, HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said the agency "looks forward to this judge’s decision being overturned just like his other attempts to keep the Trump administration from governing.”
Public health advocates noted the limitations of judicial rulings.
"The courts can only do so much without Congress, which must fulfill its oversight responsibility and rein in an executive branch that is taking an axe to core public health protections," Wright said. "Transparency and scientific integrity are not optional, especially when children’s lives are at stake. Families deserve vaccine policy grounded in evidence and expert guidance—not ideology or personal bias—with the goal of making sure every child in America can grow up healthy.”
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Obamacare Won’t Work: Time for Medicare for All
Our healthcare ‘system’—with or without the Affordable Care Act—is unsustainable: we have reached the end of the line.
Mar 14, 2026
Those without employer sponsored insurance (or Federal insurance like Medicare or the VA) in Red states, who signed up for the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), are now learning what they voted for: higher premiums for health insurance, maybe unaffordable. Meanwhile, premiums continue to rise relentlessly for employers and employees.
Our healthcare "system" is unsustainable: we have reached the end of the line.
Americans pay more for healthcare (about18 percent of GDP) than any other developed country, with mediocre outcomes. Yet the other countries, with better outcomes, have universal coverage.
It is time for change. Extend traditional Medicare to all Americans (gradually, over the course of several years). Medicare is familiar; it works. Private for profit-health insurance, less than a century old, makes no sense today.
Sick and injured patients have turned to medicine—to healers—since time immemorial. Health insurance is new: Blue Cross started as a community non profit organization in 1929, to cover surgery in hospitals.
Private for profit-health insurance, less than a century old, makes no sense today.
Yes, we are a capitalist country, and markets are efficient at producing many things, like commodities: groceries, shoes, cars, even some insurance, when it is straightforward and highly regulated, like auto insurance. But for-profit health insurance does not work.
The idea of insurance is to spread risk over a maximum number of subscribers, each of whom is at the same low risk of unpredictable casualty, like fire. This was essentially the situation of Americans a century ago—illness and injury were acute and unpredictable, patients either recovered or died. Everyone was at similar risk, only surgery was expensive.
Today is different: illness is not only predictable, it can be chronic, even life long. Moreover, today’s scientific care is expensive. The social determinants of health—income security, education, adequate food and shelter, social support (your zip code, not your genetic code)—plus public health, keep healthy people healthy.
Medical care is for the sick.
For-profit health insurers maximize premiums, minimize cost (provider fees), keep the difference, and most important, avoid the sick. Insurers exclude those with “pre-existing” conditions whenever allowed (not under the ACA), deny "authorization" where they can. They tailor "plans" with carefully engineered restrictions you don’t discover until you file a claim. They are not even providing insurance: the payments from the Federal government are risk adjusted, so the insurers are paid more for riskier patients (and they are now illegally upcoding). The providers are not. Making this happen entails huge administrative expense, which adds no value for patients or providers, only massive returns to investors. United Health Group is the third largest company in the Fortune 500.
Healthy people don’t know what plan is "right for them"; they hate the annual "choice." They only know what they can afford. (Sick people know what they need.) They do want to choose their doctor.
Traditional Medicare eliminates these problems for its beneficiaries: by law, everything medically necessary is covered. The Federal government determines fees for doctors and hospitals based on cost, as it did historically when markets didn’t work. Beneficiaries pay premiums based on income.
Fee-for-service works when we pay the right fees for the right services. Today, based on 1950’s medicine, Medicare pays too little for office visits, so-called ‘cognitive’ services (versus procedures) both primary and specialized, so there are too few providers, especially as Medicare rolls expand with retiring
Boomers. No office doctor can make a living from Medicare anymore. That is, however, easy to fix: pay providers more to care for the sickest people, who need the services only highly skilled, experienced physicians can provide. Pay surgeons less.
Best of all, Medicare is simple—ask your grandmother.
But where will the money come from?
Start by eliminating Medicare Advantage (MA) and Part D, while updating Medicare to cover prescription drugs, along with vision, hearing aids, etc. MA was supposed to save taxpayers money by providing care more efficiently. Instead, Medicare pays MA companies 20 percent more than traditional Medicare for comparable patients.
Then, require all employers (including those who currently don’t provide insurance) to pay premiums to Medicare based on payroll. Require employees to pay Medicare premiums based on wages. Just like Social Security (of which Medicare is technically a provision). The Federal government continues to pay a share.
Everyone pays, everyone gets the care they need and nobody is left out. People can choose any qualified provider. Providers remain private, and are paid enough to attract and sustain the clinicians we want and need.
We have tried every kind of private for profit health insurance there is: employer sponsored, government subsidized, market based, capitation, value-based, catastrophic, health savings accounts—it no longer works for employers, taxpayers, or the sick. This year premiums will go up, coverage will go down.
Americans’ health will suffer.
Americans need care, not coverage. We clinicians have dedicated our lives to providing it. Medicare has served millions of us well for 60 years. We cannot allow opportunistic capitalists to stand in the way for the rest.
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Warren Slams Trump for Iran War Costing 'American Taxpayers $11,500 Per Second'
According to more recent Pentagon figures, it's actually even worse.
Mar 13, 2026
Sen. Elizabeth Warren took President Donald Trump to task on Friday for making life "more expensive" with his war in Iran.
"It's costing American taxpayers $1 billion a day to fund this war," the Massachusetts Democrat said in a video posted to her social media accounts. "That is $11,500 every single second."
This is, of course, not an exact amount. The figure is based on a preliminary estimate provided by Pentagon officials to Congress last week, estimating that the war would cost about $1 billion per day.
And so far, the war has actually been even more expensive than Warren initially claimed.
On Tuesday, according to the New York Times, the Pentagon gave a more comprehensive briefing, telling Congress that just the first six days of the war had exceeded $11.3 billion in cost, which puts the price tag at about $1.88 billion per day. That's nearly $21,800 per second.
The Times noted that this was a low-end estimate and that the pricetag did not include many other costs, including those associated with the buildup of military hardware in the region before the war.
Using just these conservative estimates, a live ticker shows that as of Friday afternoon, the estimated cost of the war that began on February 28 is already fast approaching $19 billion, less than two weeks later.
"If we took the money that Donald Trump is demanding to fund the war with Iran and used that money here at home, instead, we could help cover healthcare costs for millions more Americans all across this country," Warren said.
Indeed, an analysis published last week by the Institute for Policy Studies' National Priorities Project (NPP), based on the $1 billion-per-day figure, found that on an annual basis, the cost of the war is “higher than the appropriated budget of any federal agency except the Pentagon itself."
If all that money were spent domestically, it found, it would be enough to cover the daily costs of federal nutrition assistance for more than 40 million Americans, as well as daily Medicaid costs for the roughly 16 million people expected to lose health coverage due to the Republican budget package that Trump signed into law last year.
As Warren pointed out, calculations of military spending do not even take into account the sharp hikes in gas prices Americans are facing as a result of the war, which has led Iran to retaliate by closing one of the world's largest oil shipment routes, the Strait of Hormuz.
According to the American Automobile Association's (AAA) gas price tracker, US gas prices have leaped to $3.63 per gallon on average as of Friday, up from $2.94 a month ago.
"We haven't seen gas prices jump this much since Russia invaded Ukraine," Warren said. "Some cities in Indiana and Ohio have already seen a jump of over 50 cents a gallon. In Texas and Virginia, prices are up by more than 65 cents."
Citing an image of a Chevron station in Los Angeles posted by a user on TikTok, Warren said: "California is seeing gas prices above $8." According to AAA, the average cost of gas in the state is $5.42.
Despite rising anger from voters—more than 7 in 10 of whom said in a recent Quinnipiac poll that they fear higher oil and gas costs as a result of the war—Trump has said carrying out his objectives in Iran "is far more important than having gasoline prices go up a little bit."
In a post to Truth Social on Thursday, the president framed higher prices as a positive: "The United States is the largest Oil Producer in the World, by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money," he wrote.
While this may be true for Americans who own oil and gas companies, most do not. For the average American, higher gas prices can raise the cost of transportation sometimes by thousands of dollars per year, cutting into spending on food, rent, medicine, and other essentials.
"For someone who campaigned on lowering costs on day one, Donald Trump is constantly raising the bar for how expensive he can make it to live in this country," Warren said.
Referencing Republican opposition to extending Affordable Care Act subsidies that lowered healthcare premiums for more than 20 million Americans, Warren implored viewers to "never forget that Donald Trump said we just can't afford to lower health care costs this year."
"These are about choices," she said, "and Donald Trump is making the wrong ones."
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