Many Believe RFK Jr.’s Views on Vaccination Are Dangerous and Other Findings | MHE State of the Industry Survey Results, Part 1

Close to half of the respondents to the Managed Healthcare Executive’s State of the Industry survey indicated that they believe that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. views on vaccination are dangerous and could cause harm.

When asked to identify the statement that most closely resembled their opinion of the HHS secretary nominee, 45% selected “his views on vaccination are dangerous and could cause harm because fewer people will get vaccinated.”

But just over one-fifth (22%) of the respondents indicated that they agreed that he is “raising important issues about the growing number of people, especially children with chronic disease.”

A smaller group (14%) of respondents indicated that they agreed that his views could cause harm, but that he is raising legitimate questions about vaccine safety.

The results also showed that a majority (60%) of the respondents are not in favor of Kennedy becoming HHS secretary.

Kennedy is scheduled to be questioned by the Senate Finance Committee tomorrow starting at 10 a.m.

MHE conducted the survey Nov. 15-26. There were 132 respondents, who were distributed fairly evenly across the payer (24%), provider (33%) and education (17%) sectors of healthcare (the rest were in an unspecified other category. The results of the survey were published in the January 2025 print issue of the publication.

Respondents were also asked to rank the most important issues facing American healthcare in 2025 on a 1-5 scale with 5 indicating the highest importance. High drug costs ranked the highest (3.95), followed closely by high hospital costs (3.93) and then hospital and insurer price transparency (3.75).

Private equity investment (3.09), controversy about vaccines (3.22) and adoption of artificial intelligence (3.37).

Despite its low ranking on that question, artificial intelligence was the leading vote getter when respondents were asked to select which development in healthcare technology is most likely to have the largest effect in 2025. One-third (33%) of the respondents selected artificial intelligence as the technology development most likely to have a big effect in 2025, 26% picked broader use of gene therapy and 14% picked interoperability. Only 2% picked broader use of CAR-T.

High drug costs were also at the top of the list when respondents were asked to rank the biggest challenge facing U.S. healthcare, although not by much: 20% picked high drug costs as the biggest challenge facing U.S. healthcare, followed by the 17% who selected chronic disease and the 16% who selected healthcare inequities. The other choices to the “biggest challenge” question in the survey were high hospital costs (picked by 14%), pharmacy benefit manager business practices and waste and fraud (both picked by 12%) and Medicare solvency (picked by 8%).