What a Trump-empowered RFK Jr. could do on health care
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Former President Trump's plan to let Robert F. Kennedy Jr. "go wild" on federal oversight of food and medicine could have real and serious consequences.
Why it matters: Even in an informal role, Kennedy could help diminish some of the most functional parts of the health care system, potentially leading to increases in preventable disease.
Driving the news: Kennedy recently said in a Zoom organizing call that Trump has promised him "control of the public health agencies," including HHS, CDC, FDA, NIH and the USDA.
- Trump transition co-chair Howard Lutnick told CNN's Kaitlan Collins on Wednesday that Kennedy won't be the HHS secretary.
- But Kennedy could be given a role as a White House advisor or something similar — and plenty of Trump's former staffers have wielded enormous power in those sorts of positions.
The big picture: Kennedy's worldview is pretty clear: He believes drug companies and their regulators at the FDA are making America less healthy. Trump himself has adopted some of Kennedy's positions and rhetoric over the course of this campaign.
- Kennedy said on X that one of his top priorities would be "to clean up" public health agencies, which he says "have become sock puppets for the industries they're supposed to regulate."
- "FDA's war on public health is about to end," including its "aggressive suppression of psychedelics, peptides, stem cells, raw milk, hyperbaric therapies, chelating compounds, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, vitamins, clean foods, sunshine, exercise, nutraceuticals and anything else that advances human health and can't be patented by Pharma," he said.
- In a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, he also proposed spending half of the NIH research budget on "preventive, alternative and holistic approaches to health."
Reality check: America's health outcomes are significantly worse than other wealthy countries.
- The reasons are complex: socioeconomic disparities; a lack of emphasis on prevention; and an expensive, convoluted system that lets millions of people slip through the cracks.
- But Kennedy's prime targets — the FDA's drug review process and NIH research — are recognized as the world's gold standards.
- And there's no question that scientific and pharmaceutical advances over the last several decades, including vaccines, have had positive outcomes on Americans' health and longevity.
The other side: Some of Kennedy's other ideas — including capping drug prices, limiting direct-to-consumer drug ads and cracking down on highly processed foods — have bipartisan support.
- The Trump campaign didn't respond to a request for more information on what Kennedy's role would be specifically, and whether the former president disagrees with any of his positions.
The bottom line: Elevating Kennedy to a position of power could ultimately lead to more vaccine hesitancy, more infectious disease, less trust in public health institutions and generalized distrust of the health care system.
