Do Doctors Make Money Off Vaccines? A Look At Incentives And Bonus Structures

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

“Doctors are being paid to vaccinate, not to evaluate,” Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a recent video.

“They’re pressured to follow the money, not the science.”

Doctors administer dozens of vaccines to many children in the United States. Adults are also advised to receive multiple shots.

Here’s what to know about vaccines and payments.

What Does the Literature Say?

A review of studies confirms that some doctors profit from vaccinating.

In a 2020 paper, researchers found when analyzing three years’ worth of vaccination claims for five Colorado clinics that reimbursements averaged 125 percent of costs, making administering vaccines “financially favorable across the practices.”

Another study found that various providers in North Carolina, when receiving the maximum payment for reimbursement from insurers or the government, profited from vaccinating patients. Even if they received the minimum payment, pediatric and family medicine practices still reported positive income, according to the 2019 study.

On the other hand, other doctors say the costs of administering certain vaccines to certain people exceed the vaccine payments.

In a survey of 34 pediatricians, for instance, more than half said they do not profit from vaccinating, according to a 2009 paper.

A number of practitioners have also said they face escalating costs associated with vaccination, such as staffing, leading them to stop or consider stopping providing vaccines to patients with private insurance.

Reimbursement for vaccinating patients varies depending on whether patients have private or public insurance. Under a program called Vaccines for Children, the government also provides vaccines to doctors for free. It does not pay for related costs, but doctors can charge an administration fee that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says “helps providers offset their costs of doing business,” with the maximum varying by state.

A nurse prepares to give a COVID-19 vaccine to a boy as his mother comforts him in Denver on Nov. 3, 2021. Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images

What About Those Bonuses?

Doctors can make extra money for vaccinating under incentive programs from insurers, as highlighted by Brian Hooker, a senior scientist with Children’s Health Defense—a group Kennedy chaired through 2023—and other witnesses during a hearing in July on vaccines held by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.).

“Some pediatricians can make upwards to a million or more a year just in those incentives,” Hooker said.

Asked for citations, Hooker pointed The Epoch Times to documents he collected from insurance companies that list available bonuses.

Links to those and other documents that outline incentives and are available online are provided below:

• Blue Cross Blue Shield Blue Care Network of Michigan: $400 per child who receives a set of 24 or 25 vaccine doses on or before their second birthday.

• Aetna Better Health of Louisiana: $10–$25 per member, depending on level of COVID-19 vaccination coverage practice-wide.

• Molina Healthcare of Ohio: $100 incentive for COVID-19 vaccination.

• Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield Medicaid: $50 per individual aged 6 months and older who received a COVID-19 vaccine by Dec. 31, 2022.

• United Healthcare Community Plan of Michigan: Incentives for patients who receive the meningococcal, Tdap (tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis), and HPV vaccines by their 13th birthday.

• Meridian: Up to $120 per child who receives the 24 or 25 doses by their second birthday, or adolescents who received three certain doses by their 13th birthday, capped at $9,600 for each category.

• BlueCross BlueShield of Illinois: $149 for each child, if 63 percent or more meet criteria, who received the 24 or 25 vaccine doses by the time they turn 2.

• Central California Alliance for Health: Bonuses for children who receive at least 24 doses by the time they turn 2 and the three certain doses before they turn 13.

The sets of vaccines for which providers receive bonuses are recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dr. Paul Thomas, who ran a pediatric practice in Oregon, estimated in a 2021 study that he was losing more than $1 million a year by offering parents what he called informed consent, or detailed discussions about the benefits and risks of the recommended vaccines.

Thomas—who surrendered his license in 2022 after the Oregon Medical Board determined that his alternative vaccination schedule posed a danger to the public—told The Epoch Times in an email that he was forced to work harder, freeze salaries, and impose an administration fee on every patient to cover income he did not receive due to administering fewer vaccines than many practices. Thomas has said he was unfairly targeted, in litigation denied by courts that found the board is protected by “absolute immunity.”

People attend an American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) conference in Anaheim, Calif., on Oct. 8, 2022. AAP, as well as some other groups and doctors, have said physicians are not motivated by money when vaccinating patients. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

“It would be near impossible for current pediatric practices to survive if not clearly impossible if they were to suddenly lose half or all their vaccine income, not to mention the catastrophic nature of loss of ‘quality’ bonuses,” Thomas said.

Dr. Renata Moon, who sits on the board of directors for the American College of Pediatricians, said that her former employer in 2020 started tracking the vaccination rate for patients. She was unable to determine why and said she would not be surprised if they were receiving compensation.

“It is unethical for physicians to receive bonuses or monetary compensation for pushing the products of pharmaceutical companies. It’s a massive conflict of interest!” Moon told The Epoch Times via email. “Do they have the patient’s best interest at heart or are they focused on their bank accounts?”

What Do Other Doctors Say?

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), as well as some other groups and doctors, have said physicians are not motivated by money when vaccinating patients.

“Pediatricians do not profit off vaccines,” the AAP said in a July 16 post on X.

The organization declined to make one of its experts available for an interview on the topic. When a spokeswoman was sent studies, including multiple published by the AAP’s journal Pediatrics, that show some pediatricians have made money from vaccinating, she pointed to an AAP webpage that states “pediatricians recommend childhood vaccines because they are one of our most effective tools to help keep children healthy and prevent diseases from spreading in communities.”

It also states, “pediatricians often take on significant costs to provide the vaccinations their patients need, and the minimal payments they receive do not always cover these costs.”

Among the costs, the group said: purchasing vaccines and storing them.

Dr. Todd Porter, a pediatrician employed in Illinois for a multi-specialty physician-led organization, said that he has not paid attention to whether he makes money from vaccinating children.

Doses of H1N1 influenza vaccine sit in a basket at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago on Oct. 6, 2009. Scott Olson/Getty Images

“I have to surprisingly side with the AAP on this one even though I no longer support the AAP on just about everything else,” Porter told The Epoch Times in an email. “As a pediatrician, my recommendation of routine childhood vaccines has nothing to do any reimbursement my office may receive and again I can honestly say I have no working knowledge of what that reimbursement would be.”

Porter says he has been motivated for the more than 20 years he has worked as a doctor to provide vaccines to minimize vaccine-preventable disease. He has never recommended the COVID-19 vaccines and believes the CDC and AAP did not provide adequate details around the risks and benefits of the shots.

“I have become a bit uncertain about the risk/benefit of each of the vaccines. I still would recommend these historical routine childhood vaccines, but with the growing vaccine hesitancy amongst parents I do not push them,” he wrote. “I also have stopped generally recommending the influenza vaccine until I see more rigorous data to show that it really works.”

Vaccination rates among kindergartners have declined in recent years, and a third of parents in a recent survey said they would be refusing some or all vaccines for their children.

Kennedy’s Statements

Kennedy has spoken several times recently about the payments for vaccinations. During an interview released in June with political commentator Tucker Carlson, he mentioned an article stating half of the revenue for most pediatricians comes from vaccines.

The Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to a request for that alleged article.

“And then there’s a whole structure where Blue Cross and the other insurance companies pay bonuses to the pediatrician … and that’s why your pediatrician, if you say, ‘I want to go slow on the vaccines,’ or, ‘I want to have a little different schedule,’ your pediatrician will throw you out of his practice because you’re now jeopardizing that bonus structure,” Kennedy said. “And these are all perverse incentives that stop doctors from actually practicing medicine and caring for the client because they’re looking at the bottom line.”

Twenty-one percent of pediatricians told surveyors that they dismissed families who declined one or more vaccines, Dr. Sean O’Leary, the current chair of the AAP Committee on Infectious Diseases, reported in a 2015 study. A 2020 review co-authored by O’Leary found evidence that dismissing families “appears to be increasing as a strategy for dealing with vaccine refusal.”

A form dismissal letter offered to doctors by the AAP states, “It has become clear that our philosophies regarding medical care differ greatly.” The letter directs parents to arrange for medical care for their children elsewhere.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington on June 24, 2025. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

O’Leary and other AAP officials said in a 2024 report that there are ethical issues about dismissing families, including whether doctors have a responsibility to care for all patients who come to them, Dismissal, they wrote, “can be an acceptable option … after repeated attempts to help understand and address parental values and vaccine concerns, engender trust, and strengthen the therapeutic alliance.”

Kennedy added in the X video on Aug. 8 that “we’re scanning every corner of the health care system for hidden incentives that corrupt medical judgment” and that officials had found “doctors are being paid to vaccinate, not to evaluate.”

He said that officials discovered that more than 36,000 doctors had reimbursements from Medicare altered based on the vaccination rates of children in their practices.

The video was released as Kennedy announced officials were repealing a previous policy that favored hospitals that reported the vaccination rates of staff members.

“Doctors should be guided by medical judgment and their Hippocratic Oath, not by financial incentives or government mandates,” Kennedy said. “That’s what this policy change is about, and it’s just the beginning.”