HHS Launches Agency-Wide "Vaccine Injury" Initiative: NIH Clinic Opened Quietly Oct 5, CMS to Pay Doctors for VAERS Reports

HHS Launches Agency-Wide "Vaccine Injury" Initiative: NIH Clinic Opened Quietly Oct 5, CMS to Pay Doctors for VAERS Reports

October 8, 2026. HHS announced a four-part initiative centered on vaccine injuries — the most concrete institutional step yet in Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s push to reorient federal vaccine policy around claimed harms. Per HHS and Ars Technica's read of the announcement:

1. A new NIH clinic in Bethesda "dedicated to studying and caring for patients experiencing health problems following vaccination." It actually opened October 5 — and per Ars Technica, Kennedy "secretly attended its ribbon-cutting ceremony alongside other high-level Trump administration officials," with the opening disclosed only via Bloomberg Law before Thursday's announcement.
2. CMS reimbursement for VAERS reporting — for the first time, physicians would be paid for time spent filing suspected vaccine-injury reports¹ to the CDC's Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System; the NYT reports CMS "may introduce a new billing code."
3. A VAERS overhaul to make the system "simpler, more accessible, and easier to use," including mobile reporting; the CDC has already awarded a ~$1 million contract to SPN Solutions Inc., a Virginia-based tech firm.
4. An EHR mandate via the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT requiring electronic health records to capture vaccine-injury information.

Kennedy's framing:

"We must listen to patients and families who report vaccine injuries—not dismiss or gaslight them. President Trump and I are building a health system that takes them seriously, follows the evidence, and uses what we learn to make vaccines safer. This is how we earn back trust in our public health institutions."

Why critics are alarmed: VAERS is deliberately an unvetted, anyone-can-file early-warning dragnet — "the vast majority [of reports] are not actually related to vaccinations" — and anti-vaccine advocates have long cited its raw reports as evidence of harm. Brad Woodhouse, president of Protect Our Care: "Now Secretary Kennedy wants to bribe doctors to claim they see vaccine harm without proof, which is just asking for higher insurance costs and a rash of waste, fraud and abuse." Even critics concede the legitimate core — better surveillance of rare adverse events — but expect the outputs to be used to inflate vaccine risk. The initiative lands amid the childhood-schedule fight (Kennedy's Vaccine Overhaul on Trial: First Circuit Weighs the ACIP Freeze While a 16-State Coalition Sues to Restore the Childhood Schedule, Trump's Aug 10 Childhood-Vaccine Executive Order (18 Shots → 11, MMR Split) Draws a 31-Lawmaker Demand That CDC Director Schwartz Answer by October 16) and the worst US measles year since 1991 (Measles: CDC Sends a "Disease Detective" and Nearly $4M to Pennsylvania — and Has Quietly Shifted Death Counting to NCHS Mortality Data). Medical Daily reports the clinic's budget, enrollment rules, and oversight remain undisclosed.