VICP works. That’s why trial lawyers want to destroy it
When evaluating federal initiatives, words such as “efficient,” “self-sustaining,” and “transparent” rarely come to mind. Yet, the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program bucks that trend by establishing a system that both provides a streamlined pathway to justice for vaccine victims and regulatory certainty for manufacturers.
Unfortunately, public officials such as Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have baselessly attacked VICP as “broken” and a “morass of inefficiency, favoritism, and outright corruption.” Kennedy is determined to “fix” (read: destroy) VICP, which could create a new set of lucrative cases for trial lawyers, possibly benefiting Kennedy’s immediate family members, without any tangible benefits to actual victims. This cannot be allowed to happen.
VICP was established 40 years ago as a much-needed alternative to the previous tort-based system, providing vaccine-injury claimants a pathway to compensation in which nearly all award money goes directly to plaintiffs. VICP has stayed true to its mission, awarding billions of dollars directly to claimants while preempting a litigation free-for-all that used to deter manufacturers from bringing vaccines to market.
The system is a just one that nimbly balances justice and innovation, which is why conservatives of all stripes have long supported it. Unfortunately, this successful program is currently under attack by those who wish to bury it under the weight of more than 300 conditions that have very little to do with vaccines, and — surprise — sue until they get their way.
As it turns out, the very features that make the VICP a great deal for taxpayers are what make it a prime target for the trial lawyers who want to tear it down. In the standard civil tort system, trial lawyers commonly receive 33% to 40% of all judgments off the top, leaving victims with only a fraction of their awarded damages. VICP’s fee structure, capping attorney compensation at a set hourly rate rather than a percentage of awards, is designed to maximize the share of compensation that reaches plaintiffs.
The current effort to “reform” VICP, either through legislation such as the End the Vaccine Carveout Act or by administratively expanding the Vaccine Injury Table to cover non-causally linked conditions, such as autism, is a thinly veiled attempt to break it. A recent study estimated that expanding the program’s scope to include these unfounded claims “would likely command compensation awards totaling nearly $100 Billion, with awards thereafter running at about $30 Billion each year. Those awards would quickly consume the current $4 Billion balance in the VICP Trust Fund.” And when the balance runs out, taxpayers would be left holding the bag, if the program even existed at that point anymore.
Advocates of this approach, such as Kennedy, say these are patient-focused reforms. In reality, they are efforts to sabotage the program by pushing vaccine-injury claims back into traditional civil courts, possibly unleashing a flood of new tort litigation at a time when state courts are approaching 60 million incoming cases.
As the Taxpayers Protection Alliance has repeatedly noted, the plaintiff bar is broadly supportive of efforts to destroy VICP, and when the plaintiff bar and anti-vaccine movement find themselves on the same side, it’s worth questioning why. Interestingly, Kennedy and the deep-pocketed law firms enriching his family are advocating the same “fix”: a litigation system that creates new opportunities for trial lawyers, rather than one that delivers real relief for vaccine-injury victims.
If Kennedy and his ideological allies in Congress do want to truly stand up for victims of vaccines, they should support the program uniquely well-suited to provide justice. In the last two years alone, more than 2,100 VICP claimants received compensation totaling roughly $280 million. That’s more than $130,000 per successful claim.
Protecting the VICP is critical to preserving this lifeline for patients while safeguarding innovation for decades to come.
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