By The Epoch Times | Created at 2025-03-03 16:00:38 | Updated at 2025-03-04 00:05:10
8 hours ago
The Health and Human Services secretary is rescinding a policy that was implemented in 1971.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy is rescinding a policy that required public officials seek public comment before issuing many new rules, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said on Feb. 28.
Kennedy is ending a 1971 policy known as the Richardson waiver, which required the department to use procedures outlined in the Administrative Procedure Act when making rules related to public property, loans, grants, benefits, or contracts. That include providing notice to the public and requesting public comments.
The policy “impose costs on the Department and the public, are contrary to the efficient operation of the Department, and impede the Department’s flexibility to adapt quickly to legal and policy mandates,” Kennedy’s office said in a formal notice.
Kennedy’s action took effect immediately and any matters related to public property, loans, grants, benefits, or contracts are now exempt from public notice and requirements.
“Agencies and offices of the Department have discretion to apply notice and comment procedures to these matters but are not required to do so, except as otherwise required by law,” the HHS Office of the Secretary stated.
Lawrence Gostin, the O'Neill chair of global health law at Georgetown University, wrote on the social media platform X that the move “enables HHS to operate in secret and without public participation.”
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He added: “HHS can ignore the views of key stakeholders like researchers and health advocates. HHS will make crucial public health decisions behind closed doors.”
The waiver had been referenced in a recent lawsuit brought by state attorneys general, who sued HHS over the government cutting medical research funding across the country. The attorneys general said that because the HHS did not properly adhere to the notice and comment procedures, as the HHS had agreed to do with the waiver, then it was “procedurally invalid.”
A federal judge has blocked the cuts while the case proceeds.
The HHS also recently postponed a meeting for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory committee, a move the HHS component attributed to seeking “to accommodate public comment in advance of the meeting.”
The Food and Drug Administration, another HHS component, canceled a meeting for its vaccine advisers that was set to include public comment regarding strain selection for next season’s influenza vaccines. The agency said Feb. 28 that it is still working with vaccine manufacturers on the issue, will release recommendations as to the strains, and does not expect any impact on vaccine supply or availability.
