Even the health insurance lobby knows RFK Jr. & his minions are whack jobs

Me, April 22nd:

...the good news is that the [U.S. Preventative Services Task Force] can continue to do its job. The bad news is that anti-vaxxer & complete nutjob Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is now the one who gets to decide who serves on the PSTF.

According to the PSTF website itself:

The Task Force is made up of 16 volunteer experts in the fields of preventive medicine and primary care, including internal medicine, family medicine, pediatrics, behavioral health, obstetrics/gynecology, and nursing. Most of our members are practicing clinicians. To develop recommendations, we use our own expertise and routinely invite the input of disease experts and specialists. We also invite input from stakeholders and the public.

And who decides who those 16 experts are?

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) convenes the Task Force and provides scientific, administrative, and dissemination support.

...OK, fine...and who decides who's in charge of the AHRQ?

...Private-sector members are appointed by the Secretary, HHS, to serve 3-year terms. A list of current members follows. Biographies are available by selecting the member's name.

Me, July 24th:

Cut to 6/10/25, via USA Today:

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has fired all 17 members of a committee that advises the federal government on vaccine safety and will replace them with new members, a move that the Trump administration's critics warned would create public distrust around the government's role in promoting public health.

At issue is the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, which makes recommendations on the safety, efficacy and clinical need of vaccines to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It comprises medical and public health experts who develop recommendations on the use of vaccines in the civilian population of the United States.

6/11/25: Welp:

BREAKING: RFK Jr. names Martin Kulldorff and Robert Malone and six others to ACIP.

Here's the Wikipedia entries for the two named above:

Martin Kulldorff (born 1962) is a Swedish biostatistician. He was a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School from 2003 until his dismissal in 2024. He is a member of the US Food and Drug Administration's Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee and a former member of the Vaccine Safety Subgroup of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In 2020, Kulldorff was a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, which advocated lifting COVID-19 restrictions on lower-risk groups to develop herd immunity through infection before vaccines became available, while promoting the fringe notion that vulnerable people could be simultaneously protected from the virus. The declaration was widely rejected, and was criticized as being unethical and infeasible by Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization.

Robert Wallace Malone (born October 20, 1959) is an American physician and biochemist. His early work focused on mRNA technology,[3] pharmaceuticals, and drug repurposing research. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Malone promoted misinformation about the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines.

UPDATED 7/26/25: Well, that didn't take long. Via the Wall St. Journal:

RFK Jr. to Oust Advisory Panel on Cancer Screenings, HIV Prevention Drugs

The task force determines which preventive services insurers must cover at no cost to patients

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is planning to remove all the members of an advisory panel that determines what cancer screenings and other preventive health measures insurers must cover, people familiar with the matter said.

Kennedy plans to dismiss all 16 panel members of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force because he views them as too “woke,” the people said.

Cut to Politico a few weeks ago:

The next meeting of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s newly appointed Centers for Disease Control and Prevention vaccine panel is slated for Sept. 18-19, according to a Thursday notice.

In June, Kennedy fired 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which develops recommendations for how vaccines are used, and replaced them with eight members, several of whom have expressed vaccine skepticism. One resigned before the first meeting, leaving seven members.

Why it matters: The HHS notice comes the day after CDC Director Susan Monarez was pushed out of her role during a chaotic day that also saw three top CDC leaders resign: Chief Medical Officer Debra Houry, National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases Director Demetre Daskalakis and National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases Director Daniel Jernigan, four people familiar with the departures granted anonymity to discuss the developments told POLITICO’s Sophie Gardner.

The two-day September meeting will include discussion of Covid-19 vaccines, hepatitis B vaccines, the measles, mumps, rubella, varicella (MMRV) vaccine and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).

Cut to today...24 hours before the meeting is scheduled, via AHIP (America's Health Insurance Plans):

WASHINGTON – AHIP released the following statement today regarding vaccine coverage.

“Health plans are committed to maintaining and ensuring affordable access to vaccines. Health plan coverage decisions for immunizations are grounded in each plan’s ongoing, rigorous review of scientific and clinical evidence, and continual evaluation of multiple sources of data.

“Health plans will continue to cover all ACIP-recommended immunizations that were recommended as of September 1, 2025, including updated formulations of the COVID-19 and influenza vaccines, with no cost-sharing for patients through the end of 2026.

“While health plans continue to operate in an environment shaped by federal and state laws, as well as program and customer requirements, the evidence-based approach to coverage of immunizations will remain consistent.”

As someone just noted on Bluesky:

When health insurance plans voluntarily cover a service that they would otherwise not have to cover, you can pretty much bet that they know the service saves health, lives... and, of course, money.

Regardless, we've now reached the point when Bernie Sanders and the U.S. Health Insurance Lobby are on the same page.

We're through the looking glass here, people.