Richard H. Hughes, IV, Member of the Firm in the Health Care & Life Sciences practice, in the firm’s Washington, DC, office, co-authored an article in Health Affairs, titled “Insult to the Injured: The Case for Modernizing Vaccine Injury Compensation.”
Following is an excerpt:
We are an unlikely alliance—Gentry represents vaccine-injured claimants in seeking compensation, and Hughes represents and advises vaccine manufacturers—but we can easily agree that our nation’s approach to compensating vaccine-related injuries is disjointed, cumbersome, and glacial. It is certainly falling short of its commitment to balancing patient safety and public health needs.
Born out of two laws enacted two decades apart, the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) and the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP) were intended to preserve vaccine manufacturer participation in the market by insulating them from legal liability in exchange for compensating vaccine-related injuries. Providing these alternatives to civil litigation better facilitates both vaccine supply and public demand, allowing our nation to accomplish public health goals in both an everyday and pandemic context.
Following the 1976 swine flu pandemic and injuries stemming from the nation’s mass vaccination campaign, the number of vaccine manufacturers dwindled dramatically because of aversion to legal liability. Recognizing that potential erosion of the nation’s vaccine supply, uncompensated injuries, and weakened vaccine confidence could pose substantial danger to public health, Congress enacted the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 (NCVIA); it created the VICP. In 2005, after President George W. Bush recognized similar concerns should the nation face a SARS or influenza threat, Congress passed the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act; it created the CICP.
