Social Insurance for the Socially Distant: Reforming the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program

ABSTRACT

The program is woefully deficient, particularly when compared to its sister federal vaccine injury program, the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP). [...]other social insurance programs employ successful design principles that are lacking in the CICP. [...]reform efforts are already under consideration.26 Several senators propose to reform the CICP to make its process and compensation scheme more similar to the VICP.27 But developing an effective federal vaccine injury compensation program- designed to address COVID-19 and future pandemic diseases of similar magnitude-will demand more than simply mirroring the VICP. [...]Part III extracts design principles from social insurance programs and applies them to propose reforms to the CICP. [...]it contrasts the two federal vaccine injury compensation programs, explains and evaluates critiques of the CICP, and lays out the need to reform the CICP.