Your preventive care checklist survived the Supreme Court, but its authors are changing

Key takeaways

• The Task Force’s A and B list has more than 50 entries, most of them for adults, and many are counseling or medicines, such as tobacco help, statins and HIV-prevention pills, not scans¹.
• On June 27, 2025, the Supreme Court upheld the system 6 to 3, because the health secretary can appoint the panel’s members and remove them at will⁸.
• By mid-September 2026, the panel hadn’t met in more than a year; Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired its two vice chairs in May and, on September 17, named eight new members and a new chair⁹¹⁰¹¹.
• The existing A and B grades still stand, so most health plans must still cover them without cost sharing¹⁸.
• A Cochrane review of 15 trials with 251,891 people found that general health checkups didn’t lower deaths, and Medicare’s yearly wellness visit is a planning talk, not a physical¹³¹⁴.

Braidwood Management operates a health and wellness center and insures about 70 workers through its own plan. The company wanted to drop coverage for certain drugs, including pills that prevent HIV, and to add copays or deductibles for preventive care⁸.

Along with several individuals and other small businesses, it sued. The argument was that the volunteer panel behind the federal coverage rule had been appointed unconstitutionally⁸.

On June 27, 2025, the Supreme Court disagreed, 6 to 3. The panel’s setup was legal, Justice Kavanaugh wrote, because the secretary of health and human services can appoint its members and remove them at will⁸.

That power didn’t stay on paper. In May 2026, Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired the panel’s two vice chairs, and in September he named eight new members⁹¹⁰.

The panel is the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. Its A and B grades decide which screenings, counseling and preventive medicines most health plans must cover without cost sharing⁸.

Those grades still stand as of October 2026¹. This is what they cover and how to use them.

The Task Force grades evidence, not cost

The Task Force began in 1984 and was written into law by Congress in 1999⁸. It has 16 volunteer members. A Task Force brief describes most of them as practicing clinicians in fields such as family medicine, internal medicine, pediatrics, nursing and public health³.

The panel doesn’t run its own studies. Evidence-based Practice Centers, academic and research teams funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, review the research for it³. Draft research plans, evidence reviews and recommendations each go up for four weeks of public comment³. Anyone can nominate a topic³.

One rule surprises people: “Coverage and costs are not used in assigning grades”³. The question is whether benefits outweigh harms².

The grades work like this²:

• A: recommended, with high certainty of a substantial net benefit.
• B: recommended, with high certainty of a moderate net benefit, or moderate certainty of a moderate to substantial one.
• C: offer selectively, because the net benefit is small.
• D: recommended against, because there’s no net benefit or harms outweigh benefits.
• I: the evidence is insufficient to judge.

Before 2010, the grades were only advice. The Affordable Care Act made A and B grades binding on most insurers and group plans⁸. The Court noted that the Task Force has rated more than 40 services A or B⁸.

Vaccines reach coverage through a different panel, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, whose advice counts only once the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention adopts it⁸. A later article on vaccination covers that committee and the competing schedules.

Your preventive-care checklist, by age and sex

This table is our summary of the Task Force’s adult A and B list as of October 2026¹. It leaves out pregnancy-only services, covered below. “Not set” means the list gives no interval, so ask your clinician.

Who	Service	Grade, year	How often	Note
All adults 18+	Blood pressure check	A, 2021	Yearly at 40+ or if at higher risk; every 3 to 5 years at 18 to 39 if normal4	Confirm a high reading at home or with a portable monitor you wear before treatment4
All adults 18+	Depression screening	B, 2023	Not set	Includes older adults1
Adults 64 and younger	Anxiety screening	B, 2023	Not set	1
All adults 18+	Unhealthy alcohol use screening and brief counseling	B, 2018	Not set	1
All adults 18+	Unhealthy drug use screening	B, 2020	Not set	1
Adults who use tobacco	Advice to quit, counseling and FDA-approved medicines	A, 2021	Not set	1
Adults 18 to 79	Hepatitis C test	B, 2020	Not set	1
Ages 15 to 65	HIV test	A, 2019	Not set	Also older or younger people at higher risk1
Adults at higher risk	HIV-prevention pills (PrEP)	A, 2023	Ongoing	1
Adults at higher risk	Hepatitis B, syphilis and latent TB tests	A or B, 2020 to 2023	Not set	1
Adults with heart risk factors	Diet and activity counseling	B, 2020	Not set	1
Adults with a BMI of 30+	Intensive weight-loss program	B, 2018	Not set	1
Ages 35 to 70 with overweight or obesity	Prediabetes and diabetes test	B, 2021	Every 3 years may be reasonable5	Overweight starts at a BMI of 23 for Asian Americans; consider earlier testing with a family history5
Ages 40 to 75	Statin, if 1+ risk factor and a 10-year risk of 10%+	B, 2022	Ongoing	1
Ages 45 to 75	Colorectal cancer screening	A at 50 to 75; B at 45 to 49; 2021	Options include stool FIT yearly, stool DNA-FIT every 1 to 3 years, CT colonography every 5, colonoscopy every 106	A positive stool test needs a follow-up colonoscopy6
Ages 50 to 80 with 20 pack-years who smoke or quit within 15 years	Low-dose CT lung scan	B, 2021	Yearly	1
Women 21 to 65	Cervical cancer screening	A, 2018	Pap every 3 years at 21 to 29; at 30 to 65, Pap every 3 years, HPV test every 5, or both every 5	1
Sexually active women 24 and younger, and older women at higher risk	Chlamydia and gonorrhea tests	B, 2021	Not set	1
Women 40 to 74	Mammogram	B, 2024	Every 2 years	1
Women with a personal or family history, or certain ancestry	BRCA risk assessment, then counseling or testing if needed	B, 2019	Not set	1
Women 35+ at higher breast cancer risk	Risk-reducing medicine	B, 2019	Ongoing	1
Women who could become pregnant	Folic acid	A, 2023	Ongoing	1
Women of reproductive age	Intimate partner violence screening	B, 2025	Not set	1
Women 65+, and younger postmenopausal women at higher risk	Bone density test	B, 2025	Not set	1
Men 65 to 75 who ever smoked	Abdominal aortic aneurysm ultrasound	B, 2019	Once	1
Adults 65+ at higher risk of falls	Exercise program	B, 2024	Often 2 to 3 sessions a week for 12 months in trials7	7

During pregnancy, the list adds tests and support, including blood pressure checks and low-dose aspirin for people at high risk of preeclampsia¹. Your prenatal clinician should walk through them.

This checklist shows what’s recommended for people at average risk, not a personal plan. A later article on choosing age-appropriate screenings covers how to build one, and another covers how to weigh any screening test’s harms.

Preventive medicines and counseling count as much as tests

It’s easy to picture the list as a row of scans. Much of it is talk and treatment.

Tobacco help, alcohol counseling, diet and activity coaching and exercise for falls are all graded A or B¹. Several medicines are too: statins for people at higher heart risk, PrEP pills against HIV, folic acid before pregnancy and drugs that lower breast cancer risk¹. Our article on vitamins and minerals covers the folic acid evidence.

Exercise for falls shows the evidence behind a B grade. In trials of adults 65 and older at higher risk, the most common programs trained gait, balance and everyday movements, often 2 to 3 times a week for a year⁷. Exercise cut the rate of falls by about 15% and injurious falls by about 16%⁷.

The Task Force reports only these relative cuts, not falls prevented per 1,000 people. Exercise didn’t significantly reduce fractures or deaths⁷.

Some popular pills are missing. Daily aspirin to prevent a first heart attack isn’t on the A and B list¹. A companion article on primary and secondary prevention explains why.

The court kept the list, and then the panel stalled

Before the Supreme Court ruled, a federal trial court had sided with the challengers and barred the government from enforcing, against them, coverage rules based on Task Force grades issued after 2010⁸. The Supreme Court reversed the appeals court’s judgment and sent the case back⁸.

The majority found that Task Force members are “inferior officers” whom the secretary may appoint. He can remove them at will and can review and block their recommendations before they take effect⁸. Justice Thomas, joined by Justices Alito and Gorsuch, dissented⁸.

Then the panel went quiet. Kennedy canceled its meetings, and by September 2026 it hadn’t met in more than a year, STAT News reported¹⁰.

In letters dated May 11, 2026, Kennedy ended the appointments of vice chairs John Wong and Esa Davis⁹. The letters said the move was meant to avoid uncertainty that could threaten the validity of future Task Force actions⁹. Eight members remained, after five terms expired early in 2026 without replacement⁹.

On September 17, 2026, HHS announced eight new members, who joined the eight still serving and brought the panel back to 16³¹¹. The new chair is Seth Corey, a pediatric hematologist-oncologist at the Cleveland Clinic¹¹. STAT reported that five of the eight newcomers are specialists, and the American Medical Association said the slate broke with the panel’s usual makeup¹⁰. In a Fox News op-ed, Kennedy argued that prevention doesn’t stop at the edge of any one specialty¹⁰.

The HHS announcement gave no meeting date¹¹. The research support has thinned too. Staff at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, which funds the evidence reviews, shrank to 84 in 2026, down from nearly 300 in 2024, according to federal personnel data cited by STAT¹⁰.

You can see the pause in the list itself. The newest date is June 2025, and the cervical cancer entry still dates to 2018¹. An updated cervical recommendation sits in the last stage of the pipeline, the one that ends in a Task Force vote¹².

What this means for you: as of October 2026, the existing A and B grades still appear on the list, and the law still requires most plans to cover them without cost sharing¹⁸. Our article on no-cost preventive care explains the coverage fine print.

A yearly physical isn’t on the list, and the evidence explains why

Many people picture prevention as a yearly head-to-toe exam with a big blood panel. Researchers have tested that.

In 2019, a Cochrane review by Krogsbøll and colleagues pooled 17 randomized trials that invited adults to general health checks, meaning bundles of tests for several diseases in people who feel well¹³. Fifteen trials, with 251,891 people, reported results¹³.

Across 11 trials that counted 21,535 deaths, checkups had little or no effect on the death rate¹³. Cancer deaths didn’t budge, and deaths from heart and blood vessel disease probably didn’t either¹³. The reviewers rated the total-death result high certainty and cautioned that checkups can trigger needless tests and treatment¹³.

They offered two possible reasons. Doctors may already spot high-risk patients during ordinary visits, and the people at highest risk may skip the checkups or the follow-up¹³.

The review tested bundles of tests offered to everyone, not the targeted services that earned A or B grades. Its lesson is that more testing in well people isn’t automatically better.

Medicare’s wellness visit is a planning meeting, not a physical

Medicare Part B covers a yearly wellness visit once every 12 months. Your first one can’t fall within 12 months of starting Part B or of a “Welcome to Medicare” visit¹⁴¹⁵. Medicare’s own site says plainly that it isn’t a routine physical exam¹⁴.

According to Medicare, the visit includes¹⁴:

• a health risk questionnaire;
• height, weight and blood pressure;
• a review of your medical and family history and your prescriptions;
• a check for signs of dementia;
• a look at your risk for substance use problems;
• an offer to discuss advance directives;
• a written prevention plan listing the screenings, vaccines and other services you need.

At the first visit, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services also requires a review of depression risk, fall risk, hearing and home safety, plus a screening schedule for the next 5 to 10 years¹⁵.

You pay nothing for the visit if your provider accepts Medicare’s approved amount, and the Part B deductible doesn’t apply¹⁴. If you also get services the visit doesn’t cover, such as a routine physical exam, you may owe some or all of that cost¹⁴.

Questions to ask at your next checkup

This is our own script. Bring it on paper.

1. “Which items on the Task Force’s A and B list am I due for, given my age, sex and history?”
2. “Is this test screening, because I feel fine, or diagnosis, because of a symptom?”
3. “For this screening, which test options do I have, and how often would I repeat each?”
4. “If the result is abnormal, what comes next, and is the follow-up covered?”
5. “Which calculator did you use for my heart risk, and what does the number mean for me?”
6. “Is there a counseling or exercise program you can refer me to?”
7. “Is anything I’m taking or doing for prevention no longer worth it?”

Natural-health readers often say prevention should start with habits, not pills. On this point, the Task Force agrees more than many people expect. Its list rewards conversations about food, movement, tobacco and alcohol¹, and its drafts are open to public comment, including yours³.

What the evidence says

Claim	Evidence rating	What it rests on
A-graded services, such as colon cancer screening at 50 to 75 and blood pressure screening, bring a substantial net benefit	Strong evidence	Grade A means high certainty of substantial net benefit246
Starting colon cancer screening at 45 instead of 50 adds benefit	Promising but early	Grade B, resting mainly on models: about 1 more cancer death averted per 1,000 people screened6
Exercise programs prevent falls in at-risk older adults	Strong evidence	Pooled randomized trials; about 15% fewer falls, but no significant drop in fractures7
General health checkups lower death rates in adults who feel well	Evidence says no, or unsafe	11 trials, high certainty of little or no effect on deaths13

Questions readers ask

The bottom line

The Task Force’s A and B list is the closest thing the United States has to an evidence-graded prevention checklist. It survived a Supreme Court challenge in 2025, and as of October 2026 it still sets what most plans must cover. Its panel, though, has stalled and is being remade.

Use the list as your floor, not your ceiling. Check which items you’re due for, bring the questions above to your next visit, and ask what each test or pill would change for you. Watch for updates, because the people writing the next version are new.

Related reading

• The preventive care that costs you nothing, and the exceptions
• Your family tree and free risk calculators can show you where to start
• Shortfalls in vitamins and minerals are common, but true deficiencies are not
• What to bring, write down and ask before a doctor visit
• A good wellness plan fits on one page and changes every season

Sources

1. U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. “A & B Recommendations.” USPSTF, accessed October 2026. uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org
2. U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. “Grade Definitions.” USPSTF, current as of June 2018. uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org
3. U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. “U.S. Preventive Services Task Force” (program brief). USPSTF, about 2016. uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org
4. U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. “Hypertension in Adults: Screening.” Final recommendation statement, April 27, 2021. uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org
5. U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. “Prediabetes and Type 2 Diabetes: Screening.” Final recommendation statement, August 24, 2021. uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org
6. U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. “Colorectal Cancer: Screening.” Final recommendation statement, May 18, 2021. uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org
7. U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. “Falls Prevention in Community-Dwelling Older Adults: Interventions.” Final recommendation statement, June 4, 2024. uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org
8. Supreme Court of the United States. Kennedy v. Braidwood Management, Inc., No. 24-316. Opinion, June 27, 2025. supremecourt.gov
9. Landi H. “Kennedy dismisses leaders of US Preventive Services Task Force.” Fierce Healthcare, May 20, 2026. fiercehealthcare.com
10. STAT News. “Kennedy moves to revive preventive services panel with new members, after months of vacancies.” September 17, 2026. statnews.com
11. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, via the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. “Secretary Kennedy Announces New Appointments to U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.” News release, September 17, 2026. uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org
12. U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. “Recommendations in Progress.” USPSTF, accessed October 2026. uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org
13. Krogsbøll LT, Jørgensen KJ, Gøtzsche PC. “General health checks in adults for reducing morbidity and mortality from disease.” Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2019 (summary). cochrane.org
14. Medicare.gov. “Yearly ‘Wellness’ visits.” Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, accessed October 2026. medicare.gov
15. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. “Annual Wellness Visit.” CMS, last modified April 9, 2026. cms.gov