According to the WSJ, "Kennedy made the case to Trump’s advisers that he would be able to enact more sweeping change as HHS secretary than he would as the administration’s health czar, the other position he was being considered for."
In addition, the WSJ cited advocacy behind-the-scenes by Elon Musk and Donald Trump Jr. In an op-ed at the Newsweek, cited by The Hill, Trump's CDC chief, Robert Redfield, also endorsed RFK as head of HHS (here). Redfield emphasized that in his view, agencies like FDA and NIH were "a captive of industry." Tom Frieden, another prior CDC director, is quoted at NPR remarking, "There are some things that RFK Jr gets right. We do have a chronic disease crisis in our country." NPR also quotes Dr. Dariush Moffarian of Tufts, "We're absolutely drowning under a flood of diet-related chronic diseases."
Per Politico, Kennedy posted on X,
"I look forward to working with the more than 80,000 employees at HHS to free the agencies from the smothering cloud of corporate capture so they can pursue their mission to make Americans once again the healthiest people on Earth. Together we will clean up corruption, stop the revolving door between industry and government, and return our health agencies to their rich tradition of gold-standard, evidence-based science."
Chronic Disease
While Kennedy's views on vaccines and FDA's regulation of food have garnered the most attention, his other signature theme has been chronic disease in general.
The website for "Make America Healthy Again" (MAHA) has a webpage for Chronic Disease Epidemic, here. The RFK Jr channel at YouTube, started for his presidential campaign, has a two-minute video, released in March 2024, highlighting his position, "Chronic disease is bankrupting America." Video here. Transcript here. At WSJ, health author Julia Hotz supports RFK Jr's interest in "social prescriptions," such as exercise, here.
Axios reviews MAHA goals, here.
AP wire service story on RFK and plans for health agencies here.
NYT on "Plans for Health Agencies" (Nov. 23) here.
See also a November 7 article in STAT, with several links to "figures in the MAHA orbit." Figures include Dr Marty Makari of Johns Hopkins, Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, and Texas congressman Chip Roy. Here, here.
##
Another CMS theme is fraud and abuse in Medicare and Medicaid. While not a special interest of RFK, it may be an interest of DOGE, Department of Government Efficiency, the government waste agency being created for Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy (here). See a Bloomberg podcast (DOGE noted) on Medicare fraud with fraud guru Boston University's Jetson LEder-Luis. who is uber-productive. Lab and other fraud is a big part of it.
