The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said on July 28 that a decision hasn’t yet been made about whether the members of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force will be fired.
The agency’s statement comes after The Wall Street Journal, citing anonymous sources, reported on July 25 that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he planned to remove all members of the task force.
Kennedy has been leading an effort to restructure the department by, among other things, streamlining programs and reducing its workforce.
The task force was created in 2010 by the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as the Obamacare law. The panel issues mandates requiring health insurers to cover preventive medical services, such as medications and screenings, without cost to patients.
“No final decision has been made on how the [task force] can better support HHS’s mandate to Make America Healthy Again,” a department spokesperson told The Epoch Times.
The “Make America Healthy Again” slogan, an adaptation of President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” motto, was propelled by a movement launched by Kennedy and Trump during the 2024 presidential campaign. On Feb. 14, Trump issued Executive Order 14212 creating the Make America Healthy Again Commission, whose goal is to end “the childhood chronic disease epidemic.”
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force consists of 16 members serving four-year terms. Among the members are medical doctors, researchers, and academics who serve on a voluntary, unpaid basis.
The panel of experts in “disease prevention and evidence-based medicine” works “to improve the health of people nationwide by making evidence-based recommendations about clinical preventive services,” according to its website.
On June 27, the Supreme Court ruled that the structure of the task force was constitutional.
A lower court had found the task force was unconstitutional because its members were appointed by the health secretary and not the president.
The Supreme Court held that because the task force members were so-called inferior federal officers, they did not need to be appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
The task force structure, and the way its members are appointed, protects “the chain of political accountability that was central to the Framers’ design of the Appointments Clause” in the U.S. Constitution, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the court’s majority.
After the ruling, some conservatives urged Kennedy to eliminate the panel. Joseph Addington, an editorial fellow at The American Conservative, was among them. In an editorial, he pointed to the panel’s endorsements of allowing patients to self-identify their gender and factoring in a patient’s race when conducting certain screenings.
After the department canceled a task force meeting scheduled for July 10, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) expressed concerns that the meeting may have been canceled as a prelude to Kennedy’s removing its members, who Murray said are “independent national experts in preventive medicine and primary care” working as “volunteers who serve the public interest.”
In June, Kennedy fired all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Zachary Stieber and Reuters contributed to this report.
This article by Matthew Vadum appeared July 28, 2025, in The Epoch Times. It was updated July 29, 2025.
Photo: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, official portrait