The Vaccine Injury Compensation Modernization Act of 2026, filed as H.R. The Program and How It Is FundedCongress created the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program in 1986 after mounting litigation over the DTP vaccine drove manufacturers out of the market and threatened the national vaccine supply. It comes from a federal excise tax of 75 cents per dose for each disease a covered vaccine prevents, deposited into the Vaccine Injury Compensation Trust Fund. Because COVID-19 vaccines were first distributed under emergency authorization, injury claims were routed to the separate Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program, or CICP, and have stayed there. As of March 2026, nearly 11,000 COVID-19 vaccine injury claims had been filed in that program.