Lawmakers have passed a bill to strengthen Illinois’ ability to make its own vaccine guidelines — legislation that follows months of tumult over vaccines at the federal level.

The bill expands the authority of the Immunization Advisory Committee, which is a group of doctors and other experts and leaders that makes vaccine recommendations to the director of the Illinois Department of Public Health. The bill also requires that insurance companies in Illinois cover vaccines recommended by the director of the state health department.

“This really is a reaction from the state of Illinois, given the politicization of public health policy at the federal level,” said chief bill sponsor Rep. Bob Morgan, D-Highwood. “We’re building out an infrastructure so Illinois can provide access to vaccines in the event of federal inaction or obstruction.”

A spokesperson for Gov. JB Pritzker’s office did not respond to requests for comment about whether the governor plans to sign the bill.

In essence, the bill would put into law a process similar to the one Illinois used in recent months to issue its own vaccine recommendations.

In a break with the federal government, Illinois recommended in late September that all adults and many children get COVID-19 shots this respiratory illness season. In contrast, a federal immunization advisory committee decided to no longer recommend COVID-19 vaccines and instead leave it up to individuals whether to get the shots.

The dueling recommendations represented a shift from previous years when Illinois and other states were aligned with the federal vaccine guidelines. This year, however, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired and replaced all members of the federal vaccine advisory committee before they voted on recommendations. He also announced changes to vaccine recommendations even before the committee vote, including that the CDC would no longer recommend COVID-19 vaccines for healthy children and healthy pregnant women.

Emily Hilliard, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, said in a statement Monday that the department is “committed to ensuring that all Americans have access to safe, effective vaccines supported by transparent, independent scientific review.”

“Efforts like this are driven more by politics than by science,” Hilliard said of the bill. “The same Democrat-led states that imposed unscientific school closures, toddler mask mandates, and vaccine passports during the COVID era are now claiming to ‘restore trust’ in public health. The Trump Administration and Secretary Kennedy are focused on rebuilding that trust by grounding every policy in rigorous evidence and Gold Standard Science, not the failed politics of the pandemic.”

The Illinois bill would also allow the state’s Immunization Advisory Committee to vote to override recommendations from the director of the state’s Department of Public Health if committee members feel that the director didn’t “adequately” consider their recommendations before issuing state guidelines.

“What happened in Washington could happen in Illinois in the future,” Morgan said. “Illinois is going to trust our doctors and our health care professionals. This commission should live on beyond any change in administration.”

The bill passed the Senate 40-18 on Thursday and passed the House days earlier by a 74-38 vote.

Morgan said bill also included “cleanup language” related to legislation signed into law earlier this year regulating pharmacy benefit managers, which are companies that act as intermediaries among drugmakers, insurance corporations and pharmacies.

America’s Health Insurance Plans, an insurance industry group that opposed the bill, said it’s against any attempt to regulate self-funded plans (which are a type of health insurance typically offered by large employers that are regulated by the federal government), beyond the limits established under federal law.

The group said it’s concerned that some provisions of the bill would be preempted by federal law and create issues with affordability of coverage.

When it comes to vaccines, the insurance group said in September that its member health plans would continue to cover all the vaccines that they covered as of Sept. 1 through the end of 2026, at no cost to patients, regardless of the federal advisory committee’s vote. The group said, “the evidence-based approach to coverage of immunizations will remain consistent.”

The Illinois Chamber of Commerce also opposed the bill but did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.

_____

©2025 Chicago Tribune. Visit chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.