Top medical groups are outraged and alarmed that anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has fired two leaders of an influential panel that makes recommendations and sets insurance coverage for preventive care—such as mammograms, colonoscopies, statin use, and depression screening.
On Wednesday, news broke that Kennedy had fired the two vice chairs of the US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), leaving the critical, nonpartisan panel half empty. Typically, the task force is made of 16 independent, volunteer preventive medicine experts who serve four-year, overlapping terms. But with the new firings, USPSTF has eight vacancies, including the chair and vice chair positions.
Kennedy has already undermined the USPSTF’s work by failing to replace members whose terms ended at the turn of the year, preventing the task force from meeting over the past year, and blocking it from releasing finalized recommendations on self-collected samples for cervical cancer screening.
With the new firings, doctors fear that USPSTF will go the way of the Advisory Committee on Immunizations Practices (ACIP) and its vaccine recommendations for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—which is to say, that Kennedy will remove expert members, replace them with unqualified allies, and push through fringe or politicized recommendations. Such damage to the task force threatens to imperil access to lifesaving preventive services for millions of Americans. Under the Affordable Care Act, most health insurance plans must cover recommended preventive services that the USPSTF grades as “A” or “B,” which reflect the evidence-based certainty of benefit.
Doctors respond
In a statement on Wednesday, American Medical Association President Bobby Mukkamala said the organization was “extremely concerned” by the firings.
“Today’s changes were foreshadowed by the earlier dismantling of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP),” Mukkamala said. “We strongly urge HHS to restore the USPSTF’s long-standing, transparent process for selecting members, specifically clinicians with expertise in the fields of preventive medicine and primary care. We also implore HHS to commit to once again holding regular Task Force meetings to ensure its important work can continue without further delay. Our patients’ lives depend on it.”
Likewise, Jan Carney, president of the American College of Physicians, said the group was “alarmed” while blasting the firing of the two doctors from the task force.
“Both physicians are highly qualified experts, and we take issue with the lack of transparency in any review that Secretary Kennedy has conducted of members of the task force,” Carney said. “The firings come as the task force has not met over the course of the past year and has been prevented from doing their work to ensure that the American public has up-to-date guidance, based on the best-available evidence, about preventive health care services. The USPSTF guidance is critical to a healthy America, and we must not allow its membership or processes to be politicized.”
Terminations
The two fired USPSTF members were John Wong, a professor at the Tufts University School of Medicine, and Esa Davis, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. According to reports, they received a letter from Kennedy, dated May 11, notifying them they were terminated “effective immediately.”
As to why they were fired, the letter stated: “This action is administrative in nature and is unrelated to your performance or many years of dedicated service to the Task Force. It is not to be understood as a removal based on your leadership or contributions. To the contrary, the Department is taking this step to help protect the Task Force and preserve confidence in the continuity and durability of its work.” It also said the terminations would “avoid uncertainty that could jeopardize the validity of future task force actions.”
The doctors pushed back, with email exchanges and a meeting with a Trump administration official, but the justification for the terminations remained murky.
Kennedy has previously disparaged the USPSTF, calling it too “woke” and “lackadaisical and negligent for 20 years.” He had also previously revealed plans to oust the panel.
Doctors are now calling for action to protect the task force. “The administration came after children’s immunizations, and now it’s coming after our mammograms and our other cancer screenings, and the medical community cannot let this happen,” former USPSTF chair Michael Silverstein told The New York Times.
