(LifeSiteNews) – U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. indicated that he’s following through on his promise to reform the panel of experts that determines which preventive medical services insurance companies must fully cover under the Affordable Care Act, commonly referred to as “Obamacare.”
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force “has been lackadaisical and negligent for 20 years,” Kennedy told the House Ways and Means Committee.
Kennedy announced last July that he intended to dismiss all 16 panel members of the task force because he viewed them as too “woke.”
“We’re now bringing new members on who have a clear mission,” Kennedy told the committee on Thursday.
Politico reported that “some public health advocates worry that Kennedy would remake the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force to align it with his views, many of which go against mainstream science, the same way he overhauled the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, appointing members who shared his skepticism of vaccine safety.”
The task force was formed in 1984 to advise the federal government on preventive health matters. The Affordable Care Act in 2010 broadened its mandate, giving it the power to determine which screenings, counseling and preventive medications insurers must cover at no cost to patients.
In recent years, however, the task force had undergone mission creep. It developed a formal Health Equity Framework to systematically consider race, ethnicity, sex, gender, and social risk factors to be used in all of their recommendation processes.
“The entire document, which is the template for all new recommendations by this important ‘Task Force,’ is all about ‘equity,’” Dr. Robert Malone noted in a LifeSiteNews essay.
“People need access to affordable healthcare and lifesaving care,” Malone declared. “These are worthy and essential goals. However, health equity is not that, and this ideology is not the answer for America.”
