National Geographic: Why Is It So Hard to Compensate People for Serious Vaccine Injury?

By David Charbonneau, Ph.D.

Vaccine injury compensation in the U.S. is broken, according to Tara Haelle, an independent science and health writer. In an article for National Geographic, Haelle outlined some of the flaws in existing programs, and what might be done to fix them.

Vaccine injury compensation in the U.S. is broken, according to Tara Haelle, an independent science and health writer. In an article for National Geographic, Haelle outlined some of the flaws in existing programs, and what might be done to fix them.

Haelle interviewed healthcare experts who told her the government’s failure to acknowledge vaccine injuries and compensate the injured has undermined public trust in vaccines and created more “vaccine hesitancy.”

“Vaccine hesitancy stems from lack of public trust,” said Maya Goldenberg, who studies vaccine hesitancy at the University of Guelph in Ontario.

As of March 22, about 217 million people are “fully vaccinated” in the U.S., but 16% of Americans still refuse to get the vaccine, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. A previous survey found one in five people cite side effects as the top reason for not getting vaccinated.

“People need to be confident that vaccines are safe and effective when they make a decision to get vaccinated,” said Goldenberg. “They also need to know that, insofar as there are real dangers involved, people will be cared for and not stranded in that rare situation [of vaccine injury].”

Walter Orenstein, associate director of the Emory Vaccine Center in Atlanta, told Haelle, “Vaccination is not a per-individual benefit, it’s for societal benefit, and when someone is injured by that vaccine, I think society owes that individual compensation.”

Haelle interviewed several people injured by COVID-19 vaccines, including Jessica McFadden, a 44-year-old fundraising officer in Indiana who was hospitalized with thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome, or TTS, one week after getting the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) vaccine.

McFadden said she’s vexed the government pushed so hard for everyone to get vaccinated and did not push to compensate those who, like her, were harmed.

“It’s like [we’re] the cost of doing business in a pandemic,” she said.

McFadden said she has good health insurance. Still, she was stuck with a bill for more than $7,000 for a five-day hospital stay and she missed two weeks of work not covered by sick leave due.

Cody Robinson, a 36-year-old stuntman from Atlanta who has won awards for his performances in two dozen films, was also injured by a COVID vaccine. After having COVID in July 2021, Robinson didn’t see a reason to get vaccinated right away, but the Screen Actors Guild began allowing productions to require vaccines on set.

After losing several jobs worth more than $40,000 in wages, Robinson said he felt “strong-armed” by his industry. “It became clear to me that the message in the industry was, if you don’t get vaccinated, you ain’t working,” Robinson said.

Like McFadden, Robinson developed multiple blood clots after his J&J jab, including one in his jugular vein. He’s now taking blood thinners and can’t do stunts, so he’s losing money — more than the wage cap of $50,000 established under the Countermeasure Injury Compensation Program (CICP), the government-run program for compensating people injured by COVID vaccines or other countermeasures.

‘If the government’s going to force you to do something, they should provide compensation if they’re screwing you over,’ he said.”

Anna Kirkland, a professor of women’s and gender studies at the University of Michigan and author of “Vaccine Court: The Law and Politics of Injury,” told National Geographic, “the country’s already fragmented and inequitable healthcare system makes it even more important that an injury compensation program functions efficiently.”

“Vaccine injury compensation may be a last line of support for families confronting devastating or lifelong medical conditions because we don’t have a medical or social safety net that reliably keeps sick and disabled people out of poverty in this country,” Kirkland said. “Medical bills are a major cause of bankruptcies.”

How  vaccine compensation programs operate

Typically, someone who is injured by a medical product can sue the manufacturer for damages, as was the case in lawsuits involving opioids and baby powder.

But that’s not the case with vaccines. Legislation passed in 1986 set up the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) to adjudicate and compensate vaccine injury claims in lieu of the civil courts.

Under the VICP, it was still possible to sue vaccine companies for injuries resulting from anything except vaccine design — which arguably covered a lot of ground — but all claims had to first go through VICP before they could proceed to a civil court.

The program was described by the legislation as “no fault:” Victims did not have to prove manufacturer negligence and companies would not be held responsible for the effects of their products. Compensation would be paid from a federal fund supported by an excise tax on vaccines — not by the vaccine manufacturers.

The argument at the time was that companies were halting production of certain vaccines because the legal liabilities were greater than potential profits.

According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, by 1985, families were seeking a combined $3.16 billion in damages for just the diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus (DPT) vaccine — 30 times that vaccine’s entire annual market share.

In 2005, President George W. Bush enacted the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act to protect pharmaceutical companies from financial liability for products developed to address public emergencies.

The PREP Act today bars people from suing Pfizer, Moderna, or J&J for COVID vaccine injury.

The PREP Act also introduced the CICP to cover any injuries arising from emergency measures, including non-routine immunizations, medical devices and drugs.

This legislation took certain vaccines out of the jurisdiction of the VICP, including pandemic vaccines, since they are considered “emergency countermeasures.”

Haelle reported a stark difference in the outcomes for claims brought to CICP and those brought to the VICP. Of approximately 400 eligible cases, CICP compensated just 7%, totaling about $6 million. Nearly all the denied claims were related to vaccines.

The VICP, meanwhile, has compensated 41% of resolved cases and paid more than $4.6 billion since 1988.

In the case of COVID vaccines, the CICP has not yet compensated a single claim, though it did approve one. In contrast, Thailand has paid more than $45 million in COVID vaccine claims.

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Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/why-hard-compensate-people-vaccine-injury/