This bill would change how the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) works and change taxes on many vaccines. Key changes include: more special masters (judges) for the program, longer and renewable terms for those special masters, new reporting on pending petitions and hearings, and new timing rules for special master decisions. It raises the maximum awards for death and for pain and suffering to $600,000 each. The statute of limitations for filing a petition is extended from 36 months to 5 years. Petitions must include medical records and other listed information. The bill directs the Secretary of Health and Human Services to add COVID-19 vaccines to the Vaccine Injury Table within 60 days, and makes people who received COVID-19 vaccines eligible to file petitions under VICP. It also treats the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program as a concurrent remedy and clarifies how civil actions related to covered countermeasures are handled. HHS must submit multi-year budgets showing resource needs and backlog estimates for the VICP and the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program for fiscal years 2027–2031. The bill would add several vaccines (dengue, SARS-CoV-2, RSV, shingles, and other routinely administered vaccines) to the list of taxable vaccines and clarify that certain long-acting monoclonal antibody products are treated as vaccines for the excise tax. It requires HHS to notify Treasury and certain congressional committees when a vaccine is first licensed or authorized and first commercially distributed. Finally, the bill raises the vaccine excise tax from $0.75 to $2.20 per dose, effective six months after enactment.
No publicly available information on total federal cost estimates or revenue effects appears in the bill text. The bill does specify:
No publicly available information.
No publicly available information.