HHS under Kennedy might be moving to undercut lifesaving preventive care

Washington Post

18-07-2025

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force is a tiny independent advisory group that most Americans probably have never heard of. But there's a good chance that you might live longer — or even be alive today — thanks to the work it has done.
Created in 1984, this panel of 16 experts, housed within the Department of Health and Human Services, works on a volunteer basis to evaluate scientific evidence in more than 90 areas where preventive medicine can make a difference and offers recommendations for primary care clinicians to follow. The topics the task force studies are as varied as preventive medications (Does taking low-dose aspirin stave off cardiovascular disease?), screenings for mental and physical illnesses (At what age should women start getting mammograms?), and domestic violence (How can clinicians help find patients who are being abused by an intimate partner?).
With the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, the task force's role became dramatically more significant; a provision of that law requires that insurance companies cover the total cost of any preventive care that receives an A or a B grade from the task force. KFF, a leading health research organization, estimates that, as a result, 100 million privately insured people a year get preventive services without having to pay out of pocket.
The members of the task force meet in person only three times a year, and one of those sessions was supposed to happen on July 10. That meeting was abruptly canceled and has yet to be rescheduled — which has set off alarm bells about what, in the words of Sen. Patty Murray (D-Washington), former chair of the Senate Health Committee, 'our conspiracy-promoting Health Secretary is up to next.'
Specifically, the worry is that Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is planning a move similar to his ouster of the 17 vaccine experts who sat on the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, an independent panel that is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Kennedy is a noted vaccine skeptic, and a longtime critic of the advisory panel.
More than 100 health organizations have signed a letter to key members of Congress urging them to protect the independence and integrity of the task force 'from intentional or unintentional political interference,' noting: 'The loss of trustworthiness in the rigorous and nonpartisan work of the Task Force would devastate patients, hospital systems, and payers as misinformation creates barriers to accessing lifesaving and cost effective care.'
The move by HHS comes in the wake of the Supreme Court's June 27 decision in Kennedy v. Braidwood Management Inc., in which the justices ruled against a group of Christian-owned businesses and individuals challenging the constitutionality of the task force's role in mandating what private insurance policies cover. Specifically, the plaintiffs raised religious objections to being required to buy health insurance that covers task force-recommended measures such as PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis) to prevent HIV transmission and screenings for sexually transmitted disease.
The court ruled on somewhat technical grounds. It considered whether the process for selecting task force members, which is done by the HHS secretary, violated the Constitution's clause requiring that 'Officers of the United States' be appointed by the president and are subject to Senate confirmation.
The Trump administration, surprising some, sided with the Biden administration's argument that the task force consists of 'inferior officers' not covered under the appointments clause. But in the brief it filed in the case, the current administration added the additional claim that this meant the HHS secretary has the power to 'remove Task Force members at will, for any reason' and to overrule their recommendations.
Currently, members serve four-year terms, staggered so that each year, one-fourth of the task force is replaced. The structure helps assure that it remains independent and nonpartisan, Aaron Carroll, the president of AcademyHealth, a leading health research and policy organization, told me. To upend it, he said, would send 'a chilling message, and it opens the door to a lot of fringe theories.'
As I've written before, the real problem with the task force is that it has almost no staff and lacks the resources to keep up with the lifesaving advances that science is making. It can take years and even a decade between the time the Food and Drug Administration approves a new screening method, such as the one it green-lit last year for a simple blood test to find colorectal cancer, and when the panel gives its assessment of the test's efficacy. In the meantime, people are suffering and even dying because their disease was not caught in its early stages, when it is more curable.
Thus far, the limbo into which the task force has been placed has not received as much attention as it deserves. I have not gotten a response to my own query to HHS asking for an explanation of why its meeting was canceled and whether there are any changes planned for the role or the membership of the task force.
Is the Trump administration moving to undercut the Affordable Care Act's promise that health insurance would provide access to the most scientifically sound preventive care? Americans deserve an answer.