RFK Jr.’s focus on preventive health panel provokes new fears

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Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has his sights set on remaking another influential health panel, one that determines what preventive medical services insurers must cover for free.

After Kennedy blocked the panel from meeting on multiple occasions, declined to replace members whose terms expired and fired its leaders in May, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force is finally set to convene in August, with potentially as many as eight new members.

It will be the group’s first public meeting in 17 months, after the administration canceled four prior meetings.

Neither Kennedy or HHS has publicly offered an explanation of why they are changing the panel or what they think its role should be, raising concerns of political interference into an independent panel which historically has been apolitical.

Former members said HHS has blocked the panel from beginning work on new topics, and suppressed the release of four new guidelines, including new recommendations on cervical cancer screening.

HHS did not respond to a list of questions about the secretary’s plans for the task force, or why the administration has blocked the release of four recommendations.

Senior HHS press secretary Emily Hilliard said only that because of an “unprecedented number of nominations received” for new members, the July meeting was postponed until late August “to allow additional time for selection and onboarding” of new members.

Kennedy has repeatedly criticized the task force, accusing it of poor performance.

“That task force has been lackadaisical. It’s not been doing its job,” he told a House committee in April. “If it had been doing its job, we would have early screening for Alzheimer’s.”

During a separate hearing, Kennedy said the agency was “bringing new members on who have a clear mission.”

He did not elaborate on what that mission would be.

But alarm bells, which had been ringing for months among health experts and advocates, became even louder in May when Kennedy fired the panel’s two top leaders.

Task force leaders would typically be involved in screening and vetting potential new members.

But without the chair and vice chair, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Director Roger Klein —a political appointee— has been leading the effort.

Public health experts, advocates and former task force members worry Kennedy will follow the same path he took when he dismantled the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory panel last year and stacked it with members ideologically aligned with himself.

Kennedy’s vaccine moves were challenged in court and temporarily blocked.

Michael Silverstein, who was a co-chair of the task force before his term ended in March, said he thinks Kennedy learned from the negative attention that came as a result of his reshaping the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices into a panel filled with vaccine skeptics.

“He got into lots and lots of trouble, and there was lots of bad press by exploding ACIP and populating it with people who are non-science-based,” Silverstein said.

“He’s doing the same thing to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, but slower. But the function and the end result, I worry, is going to be the same,” Silverstein said

The Preventive Services Task Force is an independent panel of experts that reviews evidence and makes recommendations for services such as cancer screenings, HIV prevention medications and more.

It was first established by the Reagan administration in 1984 and has historically been comprised of a group of primary care doctors appointed by the health secretary.

The panel makes its recommendations using a grading scale, and ObamaCare requires insurers to cover services the task force recommends with a “grade” of A or B at no cost to patients.

The task force has historically been nonpolitical and enjoyed bipartisan support in Congress. While the services it evaluates sometimes spark debate among medical experts, they rarely attract political controversy.

Aaron Carroll, the president and CEO of AcademyHealth, a nonprofit representing health policy researchers, said inserting politics into the panel threatens to undermine its reputation.

“The concern would be that there is care that is evidence-based, that is not being reviewed right now, that is not being issued, that people would benefit from every single day, that is not getting covered [by insurance] because they’re not meeting,” Carroll said.

The other major concern is that HHS is seeking physician specialists for its new members rather than primary care doctors, who are generalists with experience across the broad range of topics the task force covers.

Adding specialists to the panel would be “a monumental change,” said John Ruiz, who served on the task force until January.

“Specialists are exactly that; they are specialists. And if that specific condition is one that is getting discussed, well, then they’re going to contribute probably better than most,” Ruiz said.

But the members have to be knowledgeable about much more than one concern.

“You have to be able to review evidence for breast cancer, but then turn around and review evidence for anxiety disorders, and then turn around and be able to review evidence for childhood dental issues,” Ruiz said.

What the task force has traditionally done is call in specialists as consultants when there’s a topic that is relevant to their expertise, said Michael Barry, who served on the task force, including as chair, from 2017 to 2024.

“Specialists and specialty organizations are not shy about giving feedback and advice for the task force, and that to me seems most efficient,” Barry said.

The other concern about specialists and specialty groups is that it opens the door to potential conflicts of interest, Carroll said.

Specialists often work in the exact areas where more screening or procedures could increase their revenue, so there is a concern that recommendations are influenced—consciously or not—by financial interests, not just evidence.

“People will start being steered into care that’s not evidence based, and that we’ll all be forced to pay for it through insurance,” Carroll said.

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