Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired both vice chairs of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, effective immediately, as part of a broader administration overhaul of the panel that has not met in more than a year.
Letters obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation show Kennedy informed doctors John Wong and Esa Davis that their appointments were scrapped. An HHS official confirmed the removals to DCNF in an email on Thursday. The New York Times first reported the firings on Wednesday.
The move marks the clearest step yet in what Kennedy told Congress in April is a full-scale "reforming" of a task force he says "has been lackadaisical and negligent for 20 years." For a panel whose recommendations directly determine what preventive services private insurers must cover under federal law, that is not a small claim, and the shake-up is overdue if even half of it is true.
Kennedy's letters framed the removals as procedural, not personal. He wrote that he directed a review of current USPSTF appointments as part of HHS's "implementation of updated governance and oversight procedures for the USPSTF and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality."
"That review was undertaken to ensure clarity, continuity, and confidence in the Department's exercise of its appointment and supervisory responsibilities, and to protect the integrity of the Task Force's work."
Kennedy also acknowledged the two doctors' records, writing that their "leadership, contributions, and expertise have been deeply valued and have advanced the Task Force's important mission to improve the health of Americans through evidence-based preventive services." He called the action "administrative in nature and is unrelated to your performance or many years of dedicated service to the Task Force."
Neither Wong nor Davis has publicly responded.
The task force normally convenes three times a year, in March, July, and November. But CNN reported on March 3 that the USPSTF had not held a single meeting since March 2025. That is a gap of more than a year, spanning what should have been at least three scheduled sessions.
HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon told CNN the panel's first meeting of 2026 had been postponed and "will be rescheduled in the coming months." An HHS notice issued in April said the department expects new members will be invited to serve on the task force beginning in July, The Hill reported.
So the timeline is plain: the panel went dark for over a year, the administration reviewed its leadership, and now two vice chairs are out. New appointments could come as soon as next month.
The USPSTF is not just another advisory board collecting dust in a federal filing cabinet. Its recommendations carry the force of law in the private insurance market. One section of the 2010 Affordable Care Act requires private insurers to cover preventive services the task force recommends with a grade of A or B. That mandate sits alongside coverage requirements tied to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, Bright Futures, and the Health Resources and Services Administration's guidelines for women's health.
In practice, that means a small group of appointed experts shapes what every American with private health insurance can access at no additional cost. Screening tests, preventive medications, counseling services, the USPSTF's letter grades translate into billions of dollars in coverage mandates.
That kind of power demands rigorous oversight. And Kennedy's charge, that the panel has operated without adequate accountability for two decades, raises a fair question: who was watching?
The groundwork for this week's action was laid publicly. During an April hearing before the House Ways and Means Committee, Kennedy told lawmakers the administration was "reforming" the USPSTF. He did not mince words about his view of the panel's track record, telling the committee it "has been lackadaisical and negligent for 20 years."
That is a pointed accusation from a cabinet secretary about a body whose recommendations carry insurance-coverage mandates for the entire private market. Whether one agrees with Kennedy's characterization or not, the fact that the panel went more than a year without meeting lends at least some weight to the idea that it was not operating with the urgency its statutory role demands.
HHS has signaled that new members could begin serving as early as July. That timeline would align with the task force's normal summer meeting schedule, assuming the administration moves quickly on nominations and the panel actually convenes.
The open questions are significant. Will the new appointees change the panel's approach to evidence review? Will the task force's grading system, which directly triggers insurance mandates, be reformed alongside its membership? Kennedy's letters referenced updated "governance and oversight procedures," but the full scope of those changes remains unclear.
The USPSTF describes its own mission as working to "improve the health of people nationwide by making evidence-based recommendations about clinical preventive services." If the panel's evidence reviews have genuinely been rigorous and independent, new leadership should confirm that. If they haven't, the public deserves to know.
This is not the first time the Trump administration has moved to reshape the advisory infrastructure at HHS. Kennedy has made clear since taking office that he views much of the department's existing apparatus with skepticism, and that he intends to use his authority to install leadership he believes will serve the public more effectively.
Critics will frame the removals as political interference with an independent scientific body. But "independent" is a generous word for a panel that stopped meeting, offered no public explanation for the lapse, and operates under a statutory framework that gives its recommendations binding commercial effect. Independence without accountability is not a virtue. It is a liability.
Kennedy's letters were careful to separate the administrative action from any judgment of Wong's and Davis's professional records. That distinction matters. The secretary is not alleging misconduct by two individual doctors. He is asserting that the department's oversight of the panel was insufficient, and acting to fix it.
A task force that tells insurers what they must cover should probably be able to show up for its own meetings. If it takes new leadership to make that happen, the American public, and the policyholders footing the bill, will be better for it.
