RFK Jr’s Relentless Anti-Vax Push Will Disproportionately Hurt Children on Medicaid

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has already demonstrated his Department of Health and Human Services has no concern for disparities. 

Following President Donald Trump’s January 2025 anti-Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) executive orders, HHS put Black people’s health at risk when it eliminated the collection of race data key for medical research considerations on certain diseases for which race matters. The office de-prioritized addressing racial discrimination by rolling back generations-old civil rights provisions for HHS-funded programs. It has gone after medical schools for addressing historic discrimination by considering race in admissions.

Recently, the Wall Street Journal reported that RFK Jr. diverted millions of dollars from the Office of Minority Health — which has been gutted and corrupted under RFK Jr.’s leadership — to fund his own security, despite having funds for such spending within his own office.

The moves aren’t out of line for the Trump administration, which has prided itself on pursuing a perverted colorblind policy framework that ignores centuries of ongoing discrimination, prioritizes elevating whiteness at any cost, and wherein blatant racism is rampant. But HHS’s latest move, which experts told TPM signals a renewed attempt to decrease the number of vaccines recommended for children, will have a disparate impact on children from lower-income households, regardless of race. 

Physicians and public health experts told TPM the move will disproportionately impact around half of all children in the U.S. who are either uninsured or covered by Medicaid, which is typically reserved for low-income households and individuals with disabilities. That’s because government funded healthcare must follow different rules than private insurance for vaccine coverage.

“It can’t be true that it can change the schedule and yet the vaccines will still be available to anybody who wants them,” Kelly Whitener, an associate professor of practice at the Georgetown McCourt School of Public Policy’s Center for Children and Families told TPM. 

RFK Jr. has said vaccines will still be available despite changes to federal recommendations. “But that’s not how it works,” Whitener said.

Neither the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services or the Department of Health and Human Services responded to TPM’s requests for comment.

RFK Jr. initially attempted to cut the number of federally recommended childhood vaccines from 17 to 11, but a federal judge in Boston blocked that attempt in March, saying the health secretary illegally fired and replaced the members of the policy-setting body the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP.

U.S. District Court Judge Brian Murphy also ruled in March that the government attempted to override the established, scientific process for setting vaccine policy. In doing so, “the government has disregarded those methods and thereby undermined the integrity of its actions,” he wrote.

In August, however, Trump signed an executive order which required HHS to revive a defunct childhood vaccine task force and to reevaluate long established childhood vaccine schedules. Following the order, HHS issued a request to hear from the public about whether existing types of federal vaccine recommendations should remain in place. The comment period for an HHS request for information concluded at the end of September, and raised flags for health care practitioners and advocates that the department was pursuing its anti-vaccine agenda under the guise of what, at least appeared to be, a more principled public review. 

“I think in having the executive order, and then following the executive order with [a request for information],” said Whitener, “they’re acknowledging that they’ve made some process fouls, but I think that overarching goal is still the same and it’s a desire to change the schedule.”

Even before Murphy, the federal judge in Boston, issued his decision, private insurers pledged to continue covering all vaccines recommended by ACIP before the changes made by RFK Jr. in September 2025.

The more than 35 million children enrolled in Medicaid generally or who have coverage through Children’s Health Insurance Programs, or CHIP, don’t have that luxury.

The federal government through Medicaid and CHIP is required to cover vaccines that are recommended by ACIP and on the federal vaccine schedule. The schedule set by ACIP is linked then to the federal Vaccine for Children Program’s distribution system. 

“And a vaccine that hasn’t been distributed isn’t available to a family that wants it,” Whitener said.

Children without healthcare coverage are also covered for vaccines under the VFC program. Overall, nearly half of all children in the U.S. are covered by the VFC program, said Whitener. Changes to the federal vaccine schedule removes guaranteed coverage for those children.

“When things don’t go through that normal process you don’t get the evidence base for proving these vaccines,” Georges C. Benjamin, CEO of the American Public Health Association, told TPM. “People who have to make decisions about food, or money to go to work, or money for healthcare, they’re having to make more difficult decisions, and that’s an untenable situation to put people in.”

Under Trump’s July 2025 reconciliation package known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” Republicans slashed nearly $1 billion from Medicaid over 10 years to help offset the cost of making Trump’s 2017  tax cuts for wealthy people and corporations permanent. States, including some with consequential midterm elections, are dealing with the fallout of those sweeping cuts.

Trump won seven of the 10 states that have seen the largest percentage losses in child CHIP/Medicaid enrollment since January 2025, according to data from the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families. Among those are Ohio, Texas, and Alaska — all states with toss-up Senate races as identified by Cook Political Report. 

In Indiana alone, 212,293 children, nearly 25% of all child Medicaid recipients, have dropped from the program as of September 2026.

Jennifer Takagishi has seen her patients become more vaccine hesitant since Trump and RFK Jr. took office, she told TPM.

“I find it really unfortunate and sad that that’s where we’ve come to,” said Takagishi, who is the president of the Florida Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics. “I’ve had a lot of families for a long time that I’ve built a trusting relationship with and now that’s changed.”

More than 141,000 fewer children in Florida were enrolled in Medicaid or CHIP as of September, according to data from Georgetown. But while the most vulnerable children might be more acutely affected, the Trump administration’s adversarial stance toward vaccines and traditional healthcare practitioners hurts everyone, Takagishi said.

“It’s not only low-income, it’s not only minority,” said Takagishi. “It’s anybody who’s listening to this mis- and disinformation and are choosing not to vaccinate.”