United States wants to end most payouts for leading vaccination-related injury

On the last day of its existence, the administration of former President Barack Obama made it much easier for people who sustain serious shoulder injuries from improperly administered vaccines to win cash compensation from a $4 billion government fund financed by an excise tax on vaccines.

Now, after a surge of shoulder injury claims, President Donald Trump’s administration is proposing to reverse that Obama-era regulation. In a quietly circulating proposal, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) argues the shoulder injury claims are related to the improper placement of needles and not to the vaccines themselves and says the claims threaten the “limited” pot of money available. (The fund has grown from $3.7 billion to $4 billion since January 2018.) It also contends that those opposed to vaccination are using the rise in claims to support unfounded assertions that vaccines pose a serious threat to public health.

Vaccine injury lawyers and the vaccine-injured are pushing back, saying the government is ignoring the findings of its own scientists and the National Academy of Medicine, both of which found a causal link between vaccine injection and shoulder inflammation.

“It really is an outrage that they are trying to take away the rights of so many people to obtain recovery under the program,” says Leah Durant, an attorney in Washington, D.C., who began to represent vaccine-injured clients after she sustained a debilitating shoulder injury after a tetanus vaccination. “These injuries have such a humungous impact on your quality of life.”

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