The Senate Finance Committee will hold the first of two confirmation hearings for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Donald Trump's nomination for Secretary of Health and Human Services, on Wednesday.

Kennedy would oversee 18 agencies, including the CDC, FDA, NIH, and CMS, if confirmed, as Fox News reported.

“This is the most important hearing of all of Trump’s Cabinet picks,” said Lawrence Gostin, director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University.

“The HHS secretary has enormous power over domestic health care, global health and directly oversees tens of thousands of scientists, doctors and nurses.”

Possible Contention

Kennedy's controversial views, which include his repeated claims linking vaccines to autism, are anticipated to be contentious during the hearing.

Kennedy declared in a financial disclosure dated Tuesday that he has resigned from his roles as chairman and chief legal counsel of Children's Health Defense, an anti-vaccine nonprofit organization that he established, effective December.

One of the lawsuits that the organization has initiated against the federal government pertains to the authorization of the COVID-19 vaccine for minors.

According to the disclosure, Kennedy will persist in collecting fees for ongoing litigation regarding Gardasil, a vaccine manufactured by Merck that safeguards against HPV.

Hearing Predictions

The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions will conduct a hearing on Thursday, following the one that took place on Wednesday.

Kennedy's nomination to lead HHS coincides with a decrease in childhood vaccination rates. In the 2023-2024 school year, less than 93% of kindergarteners had received all of their state-required vaccines, as reported by KFF, a nonprofit organization that conducts research on health policy issues. This figure is lower than the 95% reported in the 2019-2020 school year.

During a roundtable discussion on vaccines organized by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine expert at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, stated on Tuesday that parents are more hesitant than ever to vaccinate their children.

Obamacare

“While vaccines will probably get a lot of the attention, RFK Jr.’s ability to affect people’s health insurance coverage in some ways looms much larger,” said Larry Levitt, executive vice president of health policy at KFF.

Along with Medicare and Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act is overseen by HHS through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

These three programs cover approximately 168 million people, which is more than half of the US population Levitt said.

The department also conducts outreach to make sure people know about their insurance options and gives states money to help the uninsured get better coverage.