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Well|Kennedy Claims Doctors Profit Off Vaccines. In Fact, Many Lose Money on Them.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/15/well/rfk-jr-doctors-vaccines-profit-fact-check.html
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Experts said the health secretary’s remarks send a dangerous message: Don’t trust your physician.
July 15, 2025, 10:56 a.m. ET
Dr. Stacey Bartell wanted to offer vaccines to her patients. But at her small family medicine practice in a Detroit suburb, she could not find a way to make the finances work.
Stocking enough vaccines for her patients would cost thousands of dollars upfront, with no guarantee the sum would be recouped. She employed just one nurse practitioner, and would have to hire additional staff to manage the inventory and stay on top of insurance billing. And the special refrigerators required to store vaccines would cost another $1,000.
She knew how much vaccines mattered to her patients’ health. But it was money her practice, which was already operating on thin margins, couldn’t afford to spend.
“We just haven’t been able to shore it up here,” Dr. Bartell said. Instead she has to send her patients to pharmacies and the county health department for their shots — a concession that “hurts my heart,” she said.
So a few weeks ago, when Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health and human services secretary, claimed in an interview with Tucker Carlson that vaccine profits created “perverse incentives” for pediatricians to push immunizations, Dr. Bartell was confused.
Doctors widely consider vaccines to be a money pit. Research shows that most pediatricians either break even or lose money on shots. One 2017 study found that nearly a quarter of family medicine providers and 12 percent of pediatricians stopped purchasing vaccines because of prohibitive costs.
