By Michelle Andrews, KFF Health News

If you want a COVID-19 shot this fall, will your employer’s health insurance plan pay for it? There’s no clear answer.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime anti-vaccine activist, has upended the way COVID vaccines are approved and for whom they’re recommended, creating uncertainty where coverage was routine.

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Agencies within HHS responsible for spelling out who should get vaccinated aren’t necessarily in sync, issuing seemingly contradictory recommendations based on age or risk factors for serious disease.

But the ambiguity may not affect your coverage, at least this year.

“I think in 2025 it’s highly likely that the employer plans will cover” the COVID vaccines, said Jeff Levin-Scherz, a primary care doctor who is the population health leader for the management consultancy WTW and an assistant professor at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. They’ve already budgeted for it, “and it would be a large administrative effort to try to exclude coverage for those not at increased risk,” he said.

With so much in flux, it’s important to check with your employer or insurer about coverage policies before you roll up your sleeve.

Here’s what we know so far, and what remains unclear.

Q: How have the recommendations changed?

What used to be straightforward is now much murkier. Last year, the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech COVID vaccines were recommended for anyone at least 6 months old.

This year, the recommendation by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is narrower. Although the vaccines are broadly recommended for adults 19 and older, they are no longer recommended for healthy pregnant people or for healthy children 6 months through 17 years old.

Kennedy announced the changes in a video in May, citing safety risks for young people and pregnant people as justification.

But his claims have been widely disputed by experts in vaccines, pediatrics, and women’s health. An analysis by FactCheck.org found that the secretary “misrepresented scientific research to make unfounded claims about vaccine safety for pregnant people and children.”

In addition, recently announced changes to the vaccine approval framework have further chipped away at eligibility.

Moderna announced July 10 that the FDA had fully approved its Spikevax COVID vaccine— but approval is restricted to adults 65 and older, and for people from 6 months through 64 years old who are at increased risk of developing a serious case of COVID.

Two other COVID vaccines expected to be available this fall, Novavax’s Nuvaxovid and Moderna’s mNexspike, are also restricted. They are approved for people 65 or older and those 12 to 64 who have underlying health conditions that put them at higher risk of developing severe COVID.

Notably, Pfizer’s Comirnaty COVID vaccine is still approved or authorized for people 6 months of age and older without any restrictions based on risk factors for COVID — at least for now. But the FDA could change that at any time, experts said.

Increasing restrictions “is definitely the direction they are moving,” said Jen Kates, a senior vice president at KFF who authored a KFF analysis of vaccine insurance coverage rules. KFF is a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News.

HHS did not provide an on-the-record comment for this article.

Q: How might these changes alter my insurance coverage for the vaccine?

That’s the big question, and the answer is uncertain. Without insurance coverage, people could owe hundreds of dollars for the shot.

Most private health plans are required by law to cover recommended vaccines, whether for COVID, measles, or the flu, without charging their members. But that requirement kicks in after the shots are recommended by a federal panel— the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices — and adopted by the CDC director, according to the KFF analysis. The committee hasn’t yet voted on COVID vaccine recommendations for this fall. Its next meeting is expected to occur in August or September.

Still, employers and insurers can opt to cover the vaccines on their own, as many did before the law required them to do so. But they may require people to pay something for it.

In addition, the narrower recommendations from different HHS agencies might result in some health plans declining to pay for certain categories of people to get certain vaccines, experts said.

“I don’t think an employer or insurer would deny coverage,” Kates said. “But they could say: You have to get this product.”

That could mean a 45-year-old with no underlying health conditions raising their COVID risk might have to get the Pfizer shot rather than the Moderna version if they want their health plan to pay for it, experts said.

In addition, up to 200 million people may qualify for the vaccines because they have health conditions such as asthma or diabetes that increase their risk of severe disease, according to a commentary published by FDA officials in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Health care professionals can help people determine whether they qualify for the shot based on health conditions.

Tina Stow, a spokesperson for AHIP, which represents health plans, said in a statement that plans will continue to follow federal requirements for vaccine coverage.

Q: What are the options for people who are pregnant or have children they want to have vaccinated?

Many parents are confused about getting their kids vaccinated, according to a KFF poll released on Aug. 1. About half said they don’t know whether federal agencies recommend healthy children get the vaccine this fall. Among the other half, more said the vaccine is not recommended than recommended.

Meanwhile, Kennedy’s recommendation that healthy children not get vaccinated has a notable caveat: If a parent wishes a child to get a COVID vaccine and a health care provider recommends it, the child can receive it under the “ shared clinical decision-making” model, and it should be covered without cost sharing.

Some policy experts point out that this is the way care for kids is typically provided anyway.

“Outside of any requirements, vaccines have always been provided through shared decision-making,” said Amanda Jezek, senior vice president of public policy and government relations at the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

There’s no similar allowance for pregnant people. However, even though Kennedy has stated that COVID vaccines are no longer recommended for healthy pregnant people, pregnancy is one of the underlying medical conditions that put people at high risk for getting very sick from COVID, according to the CDC. That could make pregnant people eligible for the shot.

Depending on the stage of someone’s pregnancy, it could be difficult to know whether someone should be denied the shot based on their condition. “This is uncharted territory,” said Sabrina Corlette, co-director of Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms.

Q: How will these changes affect access to the vaccine? Will I still be able to go to the pharmacy for the shot?

“If far fewer are expected to be vaccinated, fewer sites will offer the vaccinations,” Levin-Scherz said. This could be an especially notable hurdle for people looking for pediatric doses of a COVID vaccine, he said.

In addition, pharmacists’ authority to administer vaccines depends on several factors. For example, in some states they can administer shots that have been approved by the FDA, while in others the shots must have been recommended by the ACIP, said Hannah Fish, senior director of strategic initiatives at the National Community Pharmacists Association. Since ACIP hasn’t yet recommended COVID shots for the fall, that could create a speed bump in some states.

“Depending on the rules, you still may be able to get the shot at the pharmacy, but they might have to call the physician to send over a prescription,” Fish said.

Q: What do these changes mean long-term?

It’s impossible to know. But given Kennedy’s vocal skepticism of vaccines and his embrace of long-disproven theories about connections between vaccines and autism, among other things, medical and public health professionals are concerned those views will shape future policies.

“The recommendation changes that were made with respect to children and pregnant women were not necessarily made in good science,” Corlette said.

It’s already a challenge to convince people they need annual COVID shots, and shifting guidelines may make it tougher, some public health experts warn.

“What’s concerning is that this could even further depress the uptake of the COVID vaccines,” Jezek said.

Michelle Andrews: andrews.khn@gmail.com,@mandrews110

©2025 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By CALEIGH WELLS, Associated Press

It was six months ago that Selin Celikoyar bought her last tampon and switched to a reusable menstrual disc.

“I had already been wary of tampons from an environmental perspective and also from a biological perspective. I felt that they were very wasteful and expensive to consistently keep buying,” she said.

The flexible discs and other reusable menstrual products are gaining traction as alternatives to the billions of single-use pads and tampons that get tossed into landfills every year. Products such as the discs, silicone cups and period underwear can be reused for years, so they’re cost-effective and long-lasting in addition to helping people reduce waste. The popularity of the reusable alternatives has grown since the pandemic, when it was easier to experiment with period products in the privacy of a home bathroom, according to women’s health experts.

Celikoyar said she used tampons and pads for years because those are the options she grew up knowing about. But when she saw her friend make the switch to a menstrual disc, she decided to try it too.

“The experience has been such a game changer,” she said.

FILE – Tammy Compton restocks tampons at Compton’s Market, in Sacramento, Calif., June 22, 2016. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File)

Single-use products wind up in landfills

About 12 billion disposable pads and 7 billion tampons go into U.S. landfills every year, according to Dr. Luwam Semere, chief of obstetrics and gynecology at Kaiser Permanente Santa Clara. Pads are mostly plastic. Once they’re in the landfill, they take up to 800 years to degrade, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Single-use pads and tampons are by far the most popular period products. Women’s health expert Dr. Navya Mysore said that’s not because they’re better, they’re just usually the first options kids are shown.

“It was often like, ‘What did your mom use? What did your grandma use?’ And that’s how you were introduced into period hygiene,” said Mysore, a primary care physician based in New York City.

Advantages and drawbacks to switching

The most popular is the menstrual cup, which gets inserted much like a tampon. The discs get inserted farther in, so they don’t interrupt intercourse. Both can hold several times more than a tampon and can stay inserted for up to 12 hours, instead of the four to eight hours recommended for tampons. Semere also said the risk of Toxic Shock Syndrome commonly associated with tampons is much lower with menstrual cups and discs.

The cons? The products require some technique to put them in right, and doing it wrong can get messy. The cups and discs also have to be cleaned regularly with soap and water.

“It’s hard to do that if you’re at work and you’re in a shared, public restroom. It’s not the most convenient,” said Mysore.

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Cups prevent leakage by creating a suction, so people who use intrauterine devices for contraception risk dislodging them if they pull out a menstrual cup without breaking the seal.

The placement of discs, which don’t use suction, can also take some getting used to.

“It’s high up there, you don’t feel it, but it can be sometimes harder for women to pull them out,” said Dr. Annemieke van Eijk, an epidemiologist with the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine.

But for Celikoyar, the advantages of the discs outweighed the drawbacks. She said that longer changing window has gotten her through a back-to-back concert and red-eye flight without any concern.

“There’s an ease of use there for the modern woman that is significantly better than traditional methods,” she said.

Comparing costs

Menstrual cups and discs typically cost between $15 and $40 and come in different shapes and sizes. They’re available online and at pharmacies and big box stores.

“Ideally, you would like to experiment a bit with what type of cup works best for you. And the cost can be kind of prohibitive to do that,” van Eijk said.

A reusable product can help save money over the long term. Celikoyar estimates that she was using three tampons every day for seven days, or about 20 per month. With tampons costing 20 to 25 cents each, someone who switched to a reusable product would likely break even after a few months.

For people who prefer pads, the most common reusable option is period underwear, which is comparable to regular-looking underwear with an extra absorbent lining.

“Those are nice because we do see people getting irritation from pad use,” said Semere. “Because of the different materials that are in the disposable pads.”

The downside, just like with pads, is the inability to tell when it’s absorbed all that it can.

Mysore said that’s why some of her patients use the underwear as a backup, and pair them cups, discs or tampons.

“You can sort of mix and match different period products, depending on how heavy your flow is and what your period is like for you,” she said.

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

By STAN CHOE, Associated Press Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. stock market is climbing toward records on Tuesday after data suggested inflation across the country was a touch better last month than economists expected.

The S&P 500 rose 0.6% and was on track to top its all-time high set two weeks ago. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 251 points, or 0.6%, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time, while the Nasdaq composite was 0.7% higher and also heading toward a record.

Stocks got a lift from hopes that the better-than-expected inflation report will give the Federal Reserve more leeway to cut interest rates at its next meeting in September.

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Lower rates would give a boost to investment prices and to the economy by making it cheaper for U.S. households and businesses to borrow to buy houses, cars or equipment. President Donald Trump has angrily been calling for cuts to help the economy, often insulting the Fed’s chair personally while doing so.

But the Fed has been hesitant because of the possibility that Trump’s tariffs could make inflation much worse. Lowering rates would give inflation more fuel, potentially adding oxygen to a growing fire. That’s why Fed officials have said they wanted to see more data come in about inflation before moving.

Tuesday’s report showed U.S. consumers paid prices for groceries, gasoline and other costs of living that were 2.7% higher in July than a year earlier. That’s the same inflation rate as June’s, but it was below the 2.8% that economists expected.

The report pushed traders on Wall Street to bet on a 94% chance that the Fed will cut interest rates for the first time this year in September. That’s up from nearly 86% a day earlier, according to data from CME Group.

The Fed will receive one more report on inflation, as well as one more on the U.S. job market, before its next meeting, which ends Sept. 17. The most recent jobs report was a stunner, coming in much weaker than economists expected.

Some economists warn that more twists and turns in upcoming data could make the Fed’s upcoming decisions not so easy.

Even Tuesday’s better-than-expected inflation report had some discouraging undertones. An underlying measure of inflation, which economists say does a better job of predicting where inflation may be heading, hit its highest point since early this year, noted Gary Schlossberg, market strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute.

“Eventually, tariffs can show up in varying degrees in consumer prices, but these one-off price increases don’t happen all at once,” said Brian Jacobsen, chief economist at Annex Wealth Management. “That will confound the Fed and economic commentators for months to come.”

Other central banks around the world have been lowering interest rates, and Australia’s on Tuesday cut for the third time this year.

On Wall Street, Intel’s stock rose 1.5% after Trump said its CEO has an “amazing story,” less than a week after he had demanded Lip-Bu Tan’s resignation.

Cardinal Health dropped 12.4% even though the company reported a stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Its revenue fell short of forecasts. Analysts said the market’s expectations were particularly high for the company after its stock had already soared 33.3% for the year coming into the day.

Critics say the broad U.S. stock market is looking expensive after its surge from a bottom in April. That’s putting pressure on companies to deliver continued growth in profit.

In stock markets abroad, indexes edged up in China after Trump signed an executive order late Monday that delayed hefty tariffs on the world’s second-largest economy by 90 days. The move was widely expected, and the hope is that it will clear the way for a possible deal to avert a dangerous trade war between the United States and China.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 jumped 2.1%, and South Korea’s Kospi fell 0.5% for two of the world’s bigger moves.

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.29% from 4.27% late Monday.

The yield on the two-year Treasury, which more closely tracks expectations for the Fed, edged down to to 3.75% from 3.76%.

AP Business Writers Yuri Kageyama and Matt Ott contributed.

By CHRISTOPHER RUGABER, Associated Press Economics Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. inflation was unchanged in July while a measure of underlying inflation rose to its highest level in five months as tariffs push the price of imported goods higher while gas and grocery prices cooled.

Consumer prices rose 2.7% in July from a year earlier, the Labor Department said Tuesday, the same as the previous month and up from a post-pandemic low of 2.3% in April. Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, core prices rose 3.1%, up from 2.9% in June. Both figures are above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target.

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The figures suggest that slowing rent increases and cheaper gas are offsetting some impacts of President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs. Many businesses are also absorbing some of the cost of the duties. Tuesday’s figures likely include some impact from the 10% universal tariff Trump imposed in April, as well as higher duties on countries such as China and Canada.

Still, stubbornly high inflation puts the Federal Reserve in a difficult spot: Hiring slowed sharply in the spring, after Trump announced tariffs in April. The stalling out of job gains has boosted financial market expectations for an interest rate cut by the central bank.

Chair Jerome Powell has warned that worsening inflation could keep the Fed on the sidelines — a stance that has enraged Trump, who has defied traditional norms of central bank independence and demanded lower borrowing costs.

Gas prices fell 2.2% from June to July and have plunged 9.5% from a year earlier, the government’s report said. Grocery prices slipped 0.1% last month, though they are still 2.2% higher than a year ago. Restaurant meals continued to get more expensive, however, rising 0.3% in July and 3.9% from a year earlier.

Tariffs appeared to raise the cost of some imported items: Shoe prices jumped 1.4% from June to July, though they are still just 0.9% more expensive than a year ago. The cost of furniture leapt 0.9% in July and is 3.2% higher than a year earlier. Clothing prices ticked up 0.1% in July, after a larger rise in June, though they are still slightly cheaper than a year ago.

Tuesday’s data arrives at a highly-charged moment for the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, which collects and publishes the inflation data. Trump fired Erika McEntarfer, then the head of BLS, after the Aug. 1 jobs report also showed sharply lower hiring for May and June than had previously been reported.

The president posted on social media Monday that he has picked E.J. Antoni, an economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation and a frequent critic of the jobs report, to replace McEntarfer.

“E.J. will ensure that the Numbers released are HONEST and ACCURATE,” Trump said on Truth Social.

Adding to the BLS’s turmoil is a government-wide hiring freeze that has forced it to cut back on the amount of data it collects for each inflation report, the agency has said. UBS economist Alan Detmeister estimates that BLS is now collecting about 18% fewer price quotes for the inflation report than it did a few months ago. He thinks the report will produce more volatile results, though averaged out over time, still reliable.

Americans are likely to absorb more trade-war costs in the coming months as Trump begins to finalize tariffs. Once businesses know what they will be paying, they are more likely to pass those costs to customers, economists say.

Trump has insisted that overseas manufacturers will pay the tariffs by reducing their prices to offset the duties. Yet the pre-tariff prices of imports haven’t fallen much since the levies were put in place.

Economists at Goldman Sachs estimate that foreign manufacturers have absorbed just 14% of the duties through June, while 22% has been paid by consumers and 64% by U.S. companies. Based on previous patterns, however — such as Trump’s 2018 duties on washing machines — the economists expect that by this fall consumers will bear 67% of the burden, while foreign exporters pay 25% and U.S. companies handle just 8%.

Many large U.S. companies are raising prices in response to the tariffs, including apparel makers Ralph Lauren and Under Armour, and eyewear company Warby Parker.

Consumer products giant Procter & Gamble, maker of Crest toothpaste, Tide detergent and Charmin toilet paper, said late last month that it would lift prices on about a quarter of its products by mid-single-digit percentages.

And cosmetics maker e.l.f. Beauty, which makes a majority of its products in China, said on Wednesday that it had raised prices by a dollar on its entire product assortment as of Aug. 1 because of tariff costs, the third price hike in its 21-year history.

“We tend to lead and then we will see how many more kind of follow us,” CEO Tarang Amin said on an earnings call Wednesday.

Matt Pavich, senior director of strategy and innovation at Revionics, a company that provides AI tools to large retailers to help them evaluate pricing decisions, says many companies are raising prices selectively to offset tariffs, rather than across the board.

“Up until now we haven’t seen a massive hit to consumers in retail prices,” Pavich said. “Now, they are going up, we’ve seen that.”

Associated Press Retail Writer Anne D’Innocenzio in New York contributed to this report.