Statement attributable to:
Jason M. Goldman, MD, MACP
President, American College of Physicians
WASHINGTON June 27, 2025— The American College of Physicians (ACP) is relieved that the Supreme Court decision announced today that finds the appointment of members to the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) is constitutional. However, if the members of the task force can be dismissed at-will and their recommendations can be ignored, we are concerned that the task force will not be able to achieve their purpose of ensuring that Americans are able to access necessary preventive services.
The Affordable Care Act provisions that require insurers to cover preventive services for patients rely heavily on the recommendations of the task force. If the body that is meant to define what services are covered is not comprised of experts in the relevant field and their recommendations can be ignored arbitrarily, access to preventive care will be threatened for patients across the country. As a physician seeing patients every day, I know how critical it is that my patients be able to afford colonoscopies, mammograms, and all the other preventive services they need. Without access to those things, lurking health conditions will be discovered later, and my patients will be sicker and less likely to survive diseases that may have been survivable if caught earlier.
We need additional guardrails that protect the task force’s ability to make, and put into effect, evidence-based recommendations about preventive care. This is critical to ensuing that our country moves toward the goal that ACP has for our health care system, that all Americans are able to access and afford the care that they need.
***
About the American College of Physicians
The American College of Physicians is the largest medical specialty organization in the United States with members in more than 172 countries worldwide. ACP membership includes 161,000 internal medicine physicians, related subspecialists, and medical students. Internal medicine physicians are specialists who apply scientific knowledge and clinical expertise to the diagnosis, treatment, and compassionate care of adults across the spectrum from health to complex illness. Follow ACP on X, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and LinkedIn.
Contact: Jacquelyn Blaser, (202) 261-4572, jblaser@acponline.org