So Who's Paying for Vaccine-Related Injuries?

By bmartin on March 12, 2008 12:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The question is raised by the government's recent decision to award compensation to the family of Hannah Poling, who experienced autistic symptoms after a concentrated series of vaccinations at the age of 19 months. The simple answer is the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), a no-fault federal program established in 1988 by the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986. Poling's case is evidently the first petitioned case of autism to receive compensation from the VICP since the program's inception.*

According to the VICP web site, the program—which is overseen by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA)—was created "to ensure an adequate supply of vaccines, stabilize vaccine costs, and establish and maintain an accessible and efficient forum for individuals found to be injured by certain vaccines." Compensation for petitioned cases is decided by the US Court of Federal Claims, and awards are taken from the VICP Trust Fund. But how is the trust fund funded?

Here's a bit more explanation: The VICP trust fund, which is managed by the Department of Treasury, is supplied by a 75-cent excise tax on each dose of purchased vaccine, depending on the number of diseases that vaccine prevents. For instance, the tax on a polio vaccine is 75 cents; the tax on a DPT vaccine is $2.25 (75 cents each for diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus). The covered vaccines and related injuries are listed here and here, and the public- and private-sector vaccine costs^† are provided by the CDC. According to the January 2008 compensation report at the Treasury web site, the fund holds nearly $2.7 billion.

The VICP web site also provides the number of petitions filed and adjudications. Since 1998, 5280 of 8127 (65%) petitions have claimed vaccine-related autism. Two thirds of autism-related petitions were submitted during 2003 and 2004; this petition spike may be related to the heated public attention directed at the proposed (but unproven) link between autism and the vaccine preservative thiomersal. To date, 354 autism claims have been dismissed, and 1165 of 2113 (55%) of the non-autism claims have been dismissed. According to the VICP, "On average, it takes 2-3 years to adjudicate a petition/claim after it is filed." Clearly the backlog for adjudicated autism claims is substantially greater than that for non-autism claims.

The following bar graph, created with data from the VICP web site, shows the petitioner's average award per compensated claim by year, from 2000 to the present. The awards do not include attorneys' fees and costs (which can also be found at the web site, along with the attorneys' fees and costs for dismissed claims). The average award per compensated claim since 2000 is approximately $900,000; the average attorney fee/cost per compensated claim is approximately $40,000.