By Michael Bielawski
It’s been reported that changes in federal funding for some healthcare services could be cut by several million for the Green Mountain State. Reports claim that vaccines and programs dealing with infectious diseases and mental health could all see cuts.
“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is pulling back $11.4 billion in funds allocated in response to the pandemic to state and community health departments, nongovernment organizations and international recipients, the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed Tuesday,” NBC News reports.
Vermont Public estimates the cuts for Vermont amount to “nearly $7M in federal grants”. These include more than $5 million for vaccine programs, funding for dealing with infectious diseases, and grants “to address health disparities.”
The Public Assets Insitute is calling for Vermonters to foot the bill so that no services are disrupted. “Now is the right time for the legislature to craft its response to federal actions before the end of the legislative session,” they wrote.
The PAI report continues that they widely expect Congress to pass “massive cuts to social benefits programs such as Medicaid and food stamps.” They expect cuts to be passed into law by this summer.
“Under proposals on the table, over a third of the 140,000 Vermonters currently enrolled in Medicaid and nearly 70,000 receiving food stamps risk losing some or all of their benefits,” PAI reports.
Meanwhile, the White House says that times have changed and so policies will change.
“The COVID-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago,” said Andrew Nixon, HHS Director of Communications. “HHS is prioritizing funding projects that will deliver on President Trump’s mandate to address our chronic disease epidemic and Make America Healthy Again.”
An Associated Press report from 2023 says there was significant waste and fraud involving federal COVID-19 funds. They found that potentially more than $280 billion in COVID-19 relief funding was lost to fraud, and another $123 billion “wasted or misspent.”
Different take on vaccines
When retiring Vermont Commissioner of Health Dr. Mark Levine was on the Morning Drive radio show last week, his comments suggest a large gap between the new Trump Administration’s more serious take on vaccine safety concerns versus Levine’s less skeptical view.
He said that in three incidences within the past two years, Vermonters returned from international travel with measles, but it did not spread.
Levine was asked about current rates of vaccination for vaccines in general. He answered, “It’s been dropping, and post-pandemic, it dropped further because there was a little more of what we would call ‘vaccine resistance’ amongst the general population. It’s a carry-over of what we call misinformation.”
Reports indicate that public trust in vaccine safety is at historic lows since concerns such as the COVID-19 vaccine has been accused of increasing heart complications in its recipients, as suggested in a recent study by Cambridge University in 2024.
The Trump Administration’s Health and Human Services Department head, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has expressed concerns about rises in childhood health and mental conditions largely coinciding with federal protections for vaccine manufacturers implemented in 1986. True North Reports covered the story in 2023.
In his new role, RFK Jr. is getting rid of vaccine policy advisers to the federal government that he believes have “conflicts of interest, as part of a widespread effort to minimize what he’s criticized as undue industry influence over the nation’s health agencies,” reported Politico on March 20.
The author is a writer for the Vermont Daily Chronicle