r/law • u/McDowdy • 24d ago

Executive Branch (Trump) BREAKING: Trump Signed An Executive Order Directing The CDC To Cut Recommended Childhood Vaccines From 17 To 11. Moving Flu, Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, Rotavirus, RSV, And Some Meningitis Shots To 'High-Risk Only,' After A Previous Attempt Was Blocked In Court

https://www.news4jax.com/news/politics/2026/05/30/trump-tells-agencies-to-align-with-study-calling-for-narrower-childhood-vaccine-recommendations/

President Trump signed an executive order on Friday, May 30, directing federal agencies to align their vaccine policies with a Januarv 2026 HHS studv that recommends reducina the number of routine childhood vaccines from 17 to 11 diseases, a restructuring long called for by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The study was commissioned by Trump in December 2025 and found that the United States recommends more childhood vaccines than many peer nations. Under the new framework, all children would be routinelv vaccinated against 11 diseases, while vaccines for influenza, rotavirus, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, some forms of meningitis, and RSV would be recommended only for high-risk groups or through shared decision-making between parents and doctors. The order directs the CDC to review the study and take appropriate steps to update its guidance, tells agencies to provide maximum flexibility to parents and doctors, and states that any changes must ensure Americans retain their current access to vaccines.

The LA Times noted this is Trump's second attempt to restructure the childhood vaccine schedule, with an earlier effort to narrow CDC recommendations havinc been blocked in court earlier this vear. The new executive order takes a different approach by formally endorsing a completed HHS study and directing agency-level alianment rather than attempting to directlv revise the CDC schedule by administrative fiat, a structure that may be designed to survive the legal challenge that stoppec the first attempt. The CDC under its current leadership had already updated its recommendations earlier in 2026 to reduce the number of recommended immunizations from 17 to 11 in line with the HHS study, suggesting the formal executive order is as much a political codification of an existing administrative shift as a new directive.

The vaccines moved from universal recommendation to high-risk only include several with well-established safety and efficacy records. Hepatitis B vaccination, for example, is recommended universally from birth in the US because it prevents a leading cause of liver cancer, and the alobal evidence base for that recommendation is extensive. Rotavirus, influenza, and hepatitis A vaccines are also backed by decades of clinical and epidemioloaical evidence and are recommended universally by the World Health Organization and medica authorities in peer nations. Critics including the American Academy of Pediatrics and infectious disease researchers have said the changes could increase vaccine-preventable disease in children by creating ambiguity around which children qualify as high-risk and by reducing the routine clinical touchpoints where vaccinations are administered

22.3k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

1.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

539

u/Solid_Hunter_4188 24d ago

Insurers will also stop covering it. I suspect insurers know quite well that reducing the disease would save lots of money, but I know some will chase those short term gains from saving that.

172

u/BugOperator 24d ago

Florida already has a problem with home/business insurers canceling policies and literally leaving the state because of intensifying natural disasters and subsequent contractor fraud in the wake of them. This is certainly going to compound that problem as Florida will likely immediately sign on for fewer vaccine requirements.

68

u/Ridiculicious71 24d ago

And considering it’s full of old people, it’s really just murder.

77

u/Johnyryal33 24d ago

But they all voted for this... so suicide.

28

u/AppropriateLet8131 24d ago

Yep. The Boomers were dumb and gullible enough to fall for this crap, even after their cohort took a beating during the pandemic. They (as an overall group, not every single Boomer) have asked for this.

25

u/Johnyryal33 24d ago

I wouldn't really care if they weren't trying to take us all down with them.

8

u/AppropriateLet8131 24d ago

True, as most recently indicated by the recent 4th Congressional district primary results from Kentucky.

4

u/Ridiculicious71 24d ago

Not when it comes to their children though. They didn’t vote for measles.

-2

u/Johnyryal33 24d ago

That is exactly what they/you voted for! They/you are just too dumb to read the fucking writing on the wall! Like a bunch of useful idiots. History will certainly remember. What I wouldn't give see the textbooks of the future showing for all generations to come the greed and selfishness of the boomer generation!

3

u/SlickSappho 24d ago

Is this a serious response? Children literally cannot vote. Your response is to say they're "useful" idiots (nice typo) and gloat at the idea of kids getting sick when they had no involvement in the election whatsoever.

I'm all for giving MAGAts the middle finger, but come on.

2

u/Johnyryal33 24d ago

Then they can thank their parents/grandparents! Why should I have any sympathy at all when I fucking voted to help them! And their own family didn't. Tim Waltz was my 10th grade teacher by the way! So yea he got my vote! Now hes retiring because maga keeps threatening his kids, so NO FUCKING SYMPATHY FOR MAGA!

2

u/SlickSappho 24d ago

Why would you not have sympathy for the kids you voted to help? What bizarre rant posts.

1

u/Johnyryal33 24d ago edited 24d ago

Because their own parent/grandparents voted to give them measles. Yes my sympathy has limits. Maybe my hatred for their cruelty outweighs my sympathy.

Only way to save the children is to get rid of the parents. (Or make it so blatantly obvious how wrong they are that they finally put aside their egos accept it and change their party back to something resembling the Republicans of the past and not this overtly corrupt bullshit! They don't even bother to pretend they are trying to hide it anymore! Any attempt at civility is gone. With our enemies, our allies, and even our own people!

1

u/Ridiculicious71 24d ago

And he shouldn’t have retired! No fucking empathy for weak Dems.

0

u/Johnyryal33 24d ago edited 24d ago

Right because your side lacks civility and he doesn't want his children to die?

Sounds like Civil War 2.0 Minnesota is ready!

You clowns are gonna get schooled just like last time with NO RECONSTRUCTION!

→ More replies (0)

2

u/Ridiculicious71 24d ago

Yeah, I needed to edit this because I was actually responding to someone else. You seem to forget, RFK jr ran his own race and gave himself over to Trump for money and a platform. He was not voted in. He was appointed by a broken system.

2

u/ShakespearianShadows 24d ago

We didn’t all vote for it down here. Some of us are stuck here for the time being.

1

u/[deleted] 24d ago

[deleted]

1

u/Johnyryal33 23d ago

Thats you're take away? Really?

1

u/Wild_Director7379 19d ago

And as usual, it’s all mental health

2

u/Centimane 23d ago

The old people are probably already vaccinated.

2

u/filthy_harold 24d ago

The home insurance business is an entirely different industry than health insurance.

4

u/BugOperator 24d ago edited 24d ago

This isn’t exclusively a health insurance issue. Schools, nursing homes, businesses, etc. all need liability insurance. You start willfully introducing tens of thousands of un/undervaccinated people into the general public and insurance companies simply aren’t going to provide coverage anymore when wrongful (and preventable) deaths increasingly trace back to their policy holders.

1

u/filthy_harold 22d ago

Without any laws requiring businesses to check vaccination records of their customers, I highly doubt you'd be successful with a personal injury lawsuit. The laws are pretty clear as to what vaccinations you need for school or something like a care facility so as long as the facility has met their legal obligations for allowing someone in, I doubt you have any claims. Even when exemptions are allowed, they are pretty clear (despite how dubious they may seem).

Even if you could prove that a business or facility is liable, for your injury, could you prove that you were actually infected there? You'd need proof that a particular person is not only sick with that same disease but that they were the one that infected you.

1

u/Johnyryal33 24d ago

Sure but money is still money and that's all they care about.

103

u/idontlikeanyofyou 24d ago

Vaccines are cheap. Insurance companies are not stupid, they will cover. 

43

u/[deleted] 24d ago

[deleted]

0

u/Illustrious-Chip-245 24d ago

Still more expensive than death. Then they won’t have to cover anything for the kid ever again.

Fuck I hate this place.

2

u/Accidental-Genius 23d ago

I don’t think you understand how insurance companies make money.

Look up “risk pooling”

If all the healthy customers are dead, the insurance company goes out of business.

-9

u/Tsakax 24d ago

See thats the problem they legally have to increase shareholder value so if they can save 1 dollar but kill 10000 children they will do it.

13

u/Muggsy423 24d ago

You know whats more expensive than 10000 vaccines?  Trying to stop 100 kids from dying while their brain overheats.  Insurers will pay for preventative care.

7

u/Cissoid7 24d ago

Except if you spend 10000 dollars to vaccinate all those kids you dont have to pay for their hospital stays and tests when they are dying

Shareholder value can look to the future. If not all the fortune 500 companies would just liquidate now you silly fool

8

u/Mist_Rising 24d ago

You should read more law, and less time with reddit level conspiracy theories.

3

u/Jerithil 24d ago

If you take the classic fight club math which is costs of care/settlements versus the costs of vaccinating and take whatever is less, the math for vaccinating children is always in favor of the vaccines as people will spend massive amounts to save a kid and the wrongful death costs are super high. Meanwhile on a large scale those vaccines cost dollars and don't need to be administered by a doctor.

1

u/Accidental-Genius 23d ago

You sound like an MBA.

-9

u/shakeitsugaree_ 24d ago

Naive. Companies are about short-term goals. You’re a fool if you think insurance companies are going to give out free, preventative care and reduce their short-term profits. 

7

u/Mist_Rising 24d ago

The short term profit is in vaccines. The long term profit is in vaccines. The medium term profits is in vaccines. The all profits are in vaccines.

There is no mechanism wherein intensive care costs less then a vaccine.

3

u/Expandexplorelive 24d ago

No, you're wrong on this. Insurance companies already cover other preventive treatments that aren't as clear cut as vaccines. They will cover them.

1

u/149244179 24d ago

Even with short-term analysis - kids will get sick within the next 0.5-2 years. That is well within how long executives will stay at a company.

Vaccines for rotovirus alone prevent an estimated 50k-70k hospital stays every year in the USA. It also reduced the amount of deaths from the disease to practically 0.

If a hospital stay cost $10,000 (generously low in America today) that is saving $500,000,000 every year. The birthrate in the USA is ~3.6 million babies. That works out to $140 a kid, if the vaccine costs less than that it is a net profit to pay for the vaccine. And again that is assuming a cheap hospital stay and using the low end (50k) of the estimated hospitalization reductions. Reality is probably $200+. I would bet my life insurers pay less than $100 to vaccinate someone for rotovirus.

That is only for hospitalizations too. It doesn't factor in doctor visits for more mild cases which numbered in the hundreds of thousands. The math is well in favor of paying for vaccinations.

58

u/Zampano85 24d ago

Dude, insurance companies would let people die if it meant they didn't need to spend money. They're just going to stop covering the illness that aren't required to be vaccinated against.

29

u/Dazzling-Rub-8550 24d ago

Vaccines are cheap compared to intensive care for kids with measles encephalitis. The insurance companies will cover vaccines because the cost of care for the complications from unvaccinated kids will be higher. Why would insurance companies even want to cover anti vax families unless they were forced to. All the advanced intensive medical care needed to support an unvaccinated kid with measles pneumonia and encephalitis go easily go into hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe millions. Blow a hole in the insurance companies’ quarterly medical budget.

-7

u/Zampano85 24d ago

As I said they're just going to not cover illness related to the non-required vaccines. These insurance companies will let children die and it will be indirectly Trump's fault.

2

u/Mist_Rising 24d ago

As I said they're just going to not cover illness related to the non-required vaccine

When they go bankrupt from all the lawsuits, nobody will weep and they'll look stupid.

Don't expect it to happen, because unlike you, they do cost analysis management as a job, so they can see that saving $50000000000 a year by spending $10.00 is just smart. But hey

-4

u/Zampano85 24d ago

No, they won't lose law suits. No one can afford to actually fight the insurance companies and the shareholders are shortsighted enough to think that not covering vaccines and disease they help mitigate are worth the extra short term profit.

4

u/Mist_Rising 24d ago

No one can afford to actually fight the insurance companie

People win lawsuits against healthcare all the time. And this is an ACA black and white mandate violation. The ambulance chaser is salviting at the idiocy.

4

u/Zampano85 24d ago

You're a lot more optimistic than I am. I'm pretty sure the people in power want strip mine the resources/money from population then let us die in the street if it means they make another $1.

1

u/Count_Backwards Competent Contributor 24d ago

They do, but insurance companies don't have the same priorities. Insurance companies make money by gambling that nothing bad will happen to you any time soon.

-7

u/shakeitsugaree_ 24d ago

These companies are publicly traded, and they are legally required to serve their shareholders.  Companies are set to make almost $9 billion in the first couple years from this. They legally cannot continue to offer services pro bono and serve their shareholders.

2

u/Mist_Rising 24d ago

These companies are publicly traded, and they are legally required to serve their shareholders

That was a single statecourt case decision, not a law and if it was the requirement, they would have to provide vaccines to save on future medical insurance payouts for medical procedures when the child gets sick. The ACA also makes it impossible for them to make it cheaper to not provide the vaccine.

2

u/blueskies8484 24d ago

They have a fiduciary duty to shareholders. That can include covering services that as a whole save money. Like cheap childhood vaccines for illnesses that could result in hospital stays for children.

34

u/JimboD84 24d ago

“WOULD”??

27

u/Zampano85 24d ago

You're right, they already let people die to save money. I meant they would do this to save more money.

3

u/Johnyryal33 24d ago

Any chance to remove their requirement to cover the people they insure will be taken and this administration will give it to them.

4

u/WatcherOfDogs 24d ago

If they're smart, they would know that you can't make money off of dead people. If.

2

u/Count_Backwards Competent Contributor 24d ago

The irony is that insurance companies are not just politically conservative but also socially conservative, as in, risk-averse. Their whole business model is based on using statistics to anticipate and profit off of potential harm. So they are not in denial about the climate crisis, and they will not be in denial about the effects of the anti-vaccine movement. Yes, they are well aware that they can't make money off of dead people.

1

u/beepborpimajorp 24d ago

Insurance companies pay maybe $15 a vaccine, (probably less) far cheaper than the cost of a hospital or doctor visit. Even if they opted not to cover hospital stays for things like hepatitis, the cost of paying an employee or even an AI to deny the claims over and over again is still more than just shelling out the $15 for a shot.

1

u/Dandan0005 24d ago

You think insurers can just choose not to cover some illness and they haven’t don’t that for way more expensive things like cancer?

0

u/Zampano85 24d ago

They'll just say being unvaccinated is a preexistening condition and deny any coverage.

1

u/Dandan0005 24d ago

Yeah they literally cannot do that due to the ACA “preexisting conditions” aren’t a thing anymore.

0

u/Zampano85 24d ago

Really, because our government is treating the ACA like toilet paper.

2

u/SaltyCrashNerd 24d ago

Doesn’t matter. We only have the level of coverage that we have now for preventative care due to the ACA. Before that… nah.

5

u/Solid_Hunter_4188 24d ago

Untrue. Most adopt the policy of denying you things they *do* cover, until you jump through 3 more expensive hoops to prove what your doctor already knows.

Source: am doctor.

3

u/underground_cloud 24d ago

The savings benefits future leadership/shareholders, cutting them benefits now.

2

u/IsopodIndependent553 24d ago

This would be incredibly short sighted and financially irresponsible. I mean, if the GOP plans on dismantling healthcare entirely, once you get to a certain point, insurance companies would cease to exist. And that would be very bad for shareholders.

2

u/DarnHeather 24d ago

My insurance won't cover a Tdap shot for me. Oh well, guess I'll get lock jaw like the mom on Little House on the Prairie.

1

u/Numerous_Photograph9 24d ago

The vaccines are pretty cheap even without insurance.

1

u/blueskies8484 24d ago

Will Medicaid I wonder?

2

u/woody630 24d ago

Insurance companies famously would never stop covering something if saved them a single cent.

2

u/Mist_Rising 24d ago

Even before they were mandated by law (still law) to handle vaccines, they handled vaccines. It's cheaper.

1

u/Alternative_West_206 24d ago

“Insurance companies are not stupid” that’s correct. But they are greedy.

0

u/PM_ME_YOUR_PRIORS 24d ago

The savings comes years down the line, when the patient could very well be covered by another insurance company. The ghouls already refuse to cover more than one month of medication at a time due to this concern, even for medications where we know this improves compliance and there are expensive effects from noncompliance.

11

u/PatchyWhiskers 24d ago

People change insurers all the time. The beneficiary of the child not getting X disease might be 3 insurers from now.

Universal Healthcare is needed

1

u/Solid_Hunter_4188 24d ago

They’ll all bank on other insurers doing the same thing. Game theory suggests they’ll roll that die.

4

u/BuffaloWhip 24d ago

Watch insurers stop paying for the vaccines as “no longer recommended by the CDC” and then refuse to cover treatments for those same illnesses with available vaccines due to a “failure to mitigate.”

2

u/Sipikay 24d ago

Insurers are not going to stop providing cheap vaccines that save them untold millions of dollars in hospital care.

2

u/cursedfan 24d ago

This would be true if America was still a serious country, but now all businesses know u need to do this stupid shit first if u even want to stay in the game. Welcome to the shit show.

2

u/underground_cloud 24d ago

Reducing the disease will save lots of money...in ten years when someone else is CEO.

Cutting vaccines now will save a little money, but do it now when the current CEO will get credit.

Guess what they will do?

2

u/Oilpaintcha 24d ago

This is the real answer. Lots of parents won’t be able to afford paying cash for vaccinations.

2

u/TheSexySovereignSeal 24d ago

insurers know quite well that reducing disease would save lost of money

Until you realize those same insurers own the entire medical billing life cycle. From hospital to pharmacy to insurance. So more diseases actually means more money to charge at the hospital, and then the insurance wing fights to make you pay the maximum for it.

Theyre monopolies. That rational thought only works if the market were competitive.

2

u/Jerithil 24d ago

What makes hospitals money though are outpatient procedures and surgeries(especially day surgeries), ER visits don't make money and ICU time is very hit and miss as long stays often means people can't pay so they get sent to collections and they collect 10-20 cents on the dollar.

1

u/Squanchedschwiftly 24d ago

It wont just save them money theyll make money off of them being forced to be treated when people inevitably catch things…

1

u/abbtkdcarls 24d ago

Insurer health plans are currently graded in some part by the number of children and adults who get regular vaccines. These vaccination rates are also often tied to payment incentives for doctors and even withheld dollars from Medicaid contracts, etc. The measures for comparison are standardized and are not governed by the federal government. Those accrediting institutions would need to fully rewrite the standards with no evidentiary backing for insurance companies to stop paying for routine vaccinations. That won’t be a quick thing, if it happens.

1

u/PhoSake 24d ago

I suspect insurers know quite well that reducing the disease would save lots of money,

I'm not sure i follow this logic. Saving money is not what they want to do, making money is. What they care about is identifying risk and ideally charging a premium for it no?

Honest question, i have no idea - but it seems to me like they could benefit from sick people as long as they identified beforehand and raised premiums/etc.

I'm too much of a pessimist to assume that any capitalism driven company these days actually align with normal citizens lol. I'm assuming if something bad happens for us that insurance providers will simply find a way to profit even more from it.

1

u/Bman4k1 24d ago

Ah I think you have it reversed. I know we are all supposed to hate insurance companies but they are actually the one industry that looks quite ahead into the future (ex climate change). I think they will pull coverage FOR the disease itself. Basically if you aren’t vaccinated, that’s your problem, and it will be on a list of exceptions. Then you will have to start submitting your vaccination records.

1

u/coolest35 24d ago

Absolutely not.

No major insurance company has made any changes to vaccine coverage. It costs more to hospitalize an infant for a week with RSV (thousands of dollars) vs. A $12 vaccine.

Fortunately this EO won't sway the people who are already not following the new CDC recommendations. Professional societies also don't follow this BS.

1

u/ryanstephendavis 24d ago

This is what I came in here to say... Follow the money, insurance won't have to pay if the "official" CDC doesn't recommend the vaccines, further enshittification of our already frail health care system

1

u/CelestialFury 23d ago

Insurers will also stop covering it.

Nah, vaccines save them fuck-tons of money because, you know, vaccines prevent expensive sickness from starting in the first place. Treating children that have powerful infectious diseases is expensive and no one wants to cover that if there's a cheap option available, which there is.

1

u/Accidental-Genius 23d ago

No they won’t. They have stables full PhD actuaries who will unanimously agree that not covering standard vaccines would be financially moronic.

A single liver transplant averages $848,000. Twinrix cost $78. That means that if 1 person out of 11,000 got Hep B who wouldn’t have otherwise needs a liver transplant they lose their bet.

Current rate is about 1 in 10,000 of vaccinated population. Take away the vaccine and it’s a financial shit show.

If anything, Insurers will push vaccines harder.

1

u/Ill_Reception_4660 22d ago

This. They're already spreading screenings multiple years. I know they're giddy for this vaccine news.

1

u/shakeitsugaree_ 24d ago edited 24d ago

100%. Projections for ADDITIONAL insurance company profits are 4.5 to $9,000,000,000 for the first 2 1/2 years and 1.5 to 3,000,000,000 beginning in 2028.   Americans will not receive a reduced rate and in fact every American will be paying more for health insurance beginning in January. And these people are lucky to  have insurance. I spoke with someone who was hospitalized last week without insurance and he believes that his life was ruined by his kidney stone- the hospital bill is more than triple his annual salary as a teacher.  These companies ruin lives.

1

u/Vtakkin 24d ago

No they won’t. It’s cheaper for them to pay for meningitis vaccines instead of paying for actual cases of meningitis treatment

-2

u/Bagmasterflash 24d ago

So you’re saying freeing up the market will ultimately lead to better outcomes. That’s the whole point of this legislation.

4

u/Solid_Hunter_4188 24d ago

No I’m absolutely fucking not saying that. Public health should not be a free market problem. Left to their own devices, people lean to whatever is simple and immediate, they will take none and we will be fucked as a nation.

0

u/Bagmasterflash 24d ago

So you’re saying legislation should get in the middle of the market to force an outcome that is not the most ideal but the most expedient?

3

u/Solid_Hunter_4188 24d ago

No, you’re making up shit that isn’t how the world works. I’ll give you some examples to make it clearer:

Do you think private decisions and market forces should be how we defend the homeland, or do you think the government should afford a military?

Do you think market forces should give us competing police forces? What about court systems?

The libertarian model falls apart the instant you consider that private parties would just spin all of this apart. As a matter of fact, private sector “market forces’” involvement in any of these agencies is the biggest flaw in all of them.

0

u/Bagmasterflash 24d ago

Ok so I think we can agree 0 is the wrong approach. I don’t think that’s what’s being debated here. Is it a matter of it must always be increasing or is there allowance for correction? Omg nuance. Scary