The Trump administration celebrated the confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be Secretary of Health and Human Services by rolling out the creation of the Make America Healthy Again Commission.

Make America Healthy Again arose as a slogan after RFK Jr. joined the Trump campaign. While some of Kennedy's ideas about health could be classified as "exotic," he asked questions that no one else seemed interested in talking about. Like why, with our enormous national investment in biomedical research and health care, is our nation a crap hole of health outcomes, particularly from chronic diseases?

This is from the introduction to the executive order creating the MAHA Commission:

Holy cow! We're talking eight figures in many cases. Now, the time scale runs from 1990 to 2024; we might note that the guy in second place, Raphael Warnock (D-GA), wasn't elected until 2021. So in three years, the reverend managed to rake in Big Pharma bucks to the tune of $14 million and change. He's in second place - and guess who's in first?

If you guessed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I), the daffy old Boshevik from Vermont, you guessed right. The pharmaceutical companies and the organizations associated with them have been feeling the Bern to the tune of $23,193,451. "Medical Societies" are the biggest donor bribers; they're into Bernie for over half that amount, $12,749,883. When Sanders claims he hasn't taken any money from Big Pharma CEOs, we should notice that he's specifying CEOs because he's taking a lot of money from the medical societies that they doubtlessly belong to. //

The only thing Bernie gets right about what socialism claims to be is that, despite his massive net worth, he still looks and dresses like a flood victim.

Eric Daugherty
@EricLDaugh
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RFK just gave a flawless answer to Bernie Sanders asking if health care is a human right.

Bet Sanders didn't expect an answer this intelligent... he interrupted RFK IMMEDIATELY.

SANDERS: Is it a human right? Yes or no?

RFK: In the way that free speech is? It's different, because free speech costs nothing. In health care - if you smoke cigs for 20 years, and you get cancer - you are now taking from the pool of resources..-

12:12 PM · Jan 29, 2025

But Sanders wasn't done. He went off on a crazy rant about baby onesies that were produced by an organization that Kennedy had been involved with that said, "Unvaxxed unafraid" and "No vax, no problem." But apparently Sanders didn't know or couldn't absorb that Kennedy said he was no longer part of the organization or on the board. He just started shrieking his head off. Kennedy started laughing, as did Megyn Kelly, who was sitting behind him in the audience.

"Are you supportive of these onesies?" Sanders screamed.

"I'm supportive of vaccines," Kennedy calmly replied.

Sanders continued to scream, "Are you supportive of this clothing which is militantly anti-vaccine?"

Kennedy and Kelly started laughing, because it was just so ridiculous. "I'm supportive of vaccines... I want good science." //

DK1969
4 hours ago
Healthcare is not a human right because it's product of someone's labor (scientists, doctors, administrators etc.). If one has a right to product of someone's labor, it's called slavery.

Concrete data shows that the ways to mitigate health care costs are greater competition among health care providers, price reform and transparency, and incorporation of more holistic health approaches to treating a person as a whole human and not as unrelated parts (heart, lungs, kidneys, feet, etc.). Instead of playing a financial and quantitative numbers game of farming through patients like cattle, health care providers should focus on reducing the incidences of chronic metabolic illness, along with mitigating urgent and catastrophic care.

Secretary of Health and Human Services nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. often points to our poor American diets and our over dependence on pharmacology as key reasons why we are metabolically unwell, but it is also our inability to build consistent health habits and do routine screenings which factor into this equation. All of these aspects are where the majority of corporate health care continues to fail, particularly to the degree it continues to align with intrusive government. //

Novant Health appears to be trying a new model of actual people and patient care minus the corporate bureaucracy and government overreach. They're partnership with Jordan is helping to make this happen. //

CaptainCall
8 hours ago
Rip out the bureaucracy and administrative nightmare in the healthcare industry and costs would be reduced by double digit percentages. For example, there are 0ver 70,000 different diagnostic and treatment codes providers must submit in order to get paid by Medicare and other insurers. Reduce the number to 5,000 and thousands of billing specialists are no longer needed, payments are processed faster, fewer errors are recorded and require re-filing. That's just one piece of the puzzle.

There are dozens of other stupid, time wasting, expensive requirements that add to the cost of healthcare and take doctors away from patients. And much of it can be laid at the feet of Obamacare, which purposely created the monster we have today as a means to end private healthcare altogether and move to the single payer, govt-run model the Dems dream of.

Probable Cause CaptainCall
7 hours ago
Adding on... I like to point to all the people involved in health care, who don't actually provide health care. All the employees of the insurance companies. All the billing people on the provider side who submit the claims to the insurers. All the HR people everywhere who deal with health care benefits.

They're not bad people -- the system created their jobs, and someone has to do them. But they don't administer strep tests or reset broken bones. And they have to be paid. //

GregInFla
5 hours ago
Concierge office care is one option, where people pay a fixed fee to the doctor to get office visits covered, with no insurance participation. Also allowing more cash-for-doctor's visits. I believe a doctor cannot charge a cash patient less than Medicare would be billed.

United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson's assassination in early December caused me to think about why Americans are so frustrated with insurance companies. As the owner of an independent pharmacy in Duarte, California, I deal with insurance on a daily basis. I got an email one evening from a patient. I've read this email before, from countless patients before this one. I have even received a letter from the Superior Court of Minnesota, listing me as a creditor for a patient who filed for bankruptcy after cancer treatment. This particular email read:

"Could you tell me what I owe you and what I may have paid. I’m trying for some grants. I can’t even buy groceries. I’ve already missed taxes on our home. But I don’t want to keep on not paying you." //

Insurance is a catch-22. It almost seems like you're punished if you use it, but you're a fool not to have it. I would love to respond to the email above with, "Don't worry, I'll take the loss, and your husband's health is more important than money." However, per insurance requirements, legally I cannot.

Affordable coverage
In 2024, a job-based health plan is considered "affordable" if your share of the monthly premium in the lowest-cost plan offered by the employer is less than 8.39% of your household income. In 2025, it is considered "affordable" if the premium is less than 9.02% of your household income.
" The lowest-cost plan must also meet the minimum value standard. //

If the premiums aren’t considered affordable for the employee and the household, they may qualify for savings in a Marketplace plan. But, if the premium is considered affordable for the employee, but not for other members of the household, then only the other household members may qualify for savings.

Citizen_bitcoin

Jameson Lopp (@lopp) on X

Hospital bill for delivering a baby + 1 week recuperation in 1956.

Total: $107.55

The US is an outlier in healthcare costs, by almost a factor of two, while delivering comparable or inferior results.
…
US performance is generally comparable to, or poorer than, countries that spend much less. I could not find any significant health metric in which the US excelled over other first-world countries.

https://ricochet.com/427416/healthcare-costs/

Collins frets about the politicization of science, but largely conflates science with his own political agenda. //

But don’t expect many mea culpas from Collins about his time at NIH. He offers no apology for funding the harvesting of body parts from late-term aborted babies for medical research. Or for financing research that used gender-destructive puberty blockers on young people. Likewise, he fails to acknowledge his past promotion of the failed Darwinian idea that our genome is swamped with “junk DNA.”

Nor does Collins take real ownership of his most significant missteps during Covid. During the rollout of the Covid vaccines, Collins falsely assured the public that mRNA from the vaccines wouldn’t stay in the body “beyond probably a few hours.” A subsequent study showed that the mRNA could persist in a person’s lymph system some two months after vaccination. Collins’ promotion of misinformation has been memory-holed. So has his emphatic promise in April 2021 that “There’s not going to be any mandating of vaccines from the U.S. government, I can assure you.” A few months later, Collins was praising the imposition of mandates as a “forceful, muscular approach” and demonizing those who didn’t want to take the vaccines as killers on the wrong side of history.

Collins does acknowledge problems with government messaging during Covid and the “collateral damage” inflicted on ordinary Americans by various policies. But he calls the collateral damage “inevitable.”

For many people, his admissions will be too little, too late. //

The most serious flaw is Collins’ core message. He frets about the politicization of science and the growing distrust of claims made in the name of science. He wants to restore public trust in “science” and the experts.

The problem is he largely conflates science with his own political agenda. By the end of the book, it becomes clear that for him “science” has become a convenient club to bludgeon people who disagree with him. //

His “pre-bunking” is entirely one-sided. His goal is to shut down critical inquiry, not cultivate it. //

Collins also suggests listening to people with whom you disagree. Unfortunately, he has spent much of his career doing the opposite.

In October 2020, three distinguished epidemiologists published the Great Barrington Declaration, which criticized the government’s lockdown policies. How did Collins respond? Did he convene a meeting with them to hear them out? No, he derided them in private as “fringe” figures and told subordinates: “There needs to be a quick and devastating take down” of their ideas. Collins expresses regret for his “intemperate” language, but says he has “no regrets for the point I made.”

In other words, he really hasn’t learned anything.

It’s precisely because Collins has insulated himself from fellow experts who disagree with him that he finds it so easy to caricature the viewpoints he opposes.

That is not the road to wisdom. It’s a road to folly.

Nuclear medicine is one of those cool specialities that doesn’t get enough attention. While nuclear energy has enjoyed a revival in recent years, little attention has been paid to nuclear medicine. That’s probably partly because explaining it in technical terms inevitably removes some of the magic and partly because many people fear radiation and don’t want to think about it.

But nuclear medicine deserves attention. Not all of the world's nuclear reactors are used for producing energy; they are also used for producing radioisotopes for medicine and industry, training, and other purposes. They are known as research reactors, and there are currently around 220 research reactors in 53 countries. In the heyday of nuclear development, in 1975, there were 373 neutron factories in 55 countries. //

Outside of the wealthier nations, there is a significant shortage of equipment and workforce for nuclear imaging around the world, and one study found that:

A comprehensive scale-up of imaging, treatment, and care quality would avert 9·55 million (12·5%) of all cancer deaths caused by the modelled cancers worldwide, saving 232·30 million life-years. Scale-up of imaging would cost US$6·84 billion in 2020–30 but yield lifetime productivity gains of $1·23 trillion worldwide, a net return of $179·19 per $1 invested.

Healthy people benefit humanity. For those living in the poorest nations to gain access to improved healthcare, nuclear medicine will play a vital role going forward, although when and how that will happen remains to be seen.

In his latest bout of schooling his co-workers, a CNN panel that featured Jennings got onto the subject of RFK. Geoff Duncan said there's "intellectually" no reason by RFK Jr. should be the HHS secretary, and at best should be an "advisor." Duncan said that there's nothing on his resume that qualifies Kennedy.

It should be noted that the current HHS secretary is Xavier Becerra, a lawyer who was once California's Attorney General, who also has no health background, but this is never brought up by the left. The assistant secretary for the HHS is Rachel Levine, a man who thinks he's a woman.

Jennings tried to confront Duncan with this fact by asking what the qualifications of the previous heads of the HHS were, even before Becerra, causing Duncan to reveal his cards.

"RFK Jr. is a nut."

Again, I remind everyone of Rachel Levine, but I digress.

With Duncan's true reasoning now laid bare, Jennings began his offensive.

“Okay, so that's different from what you just said," said Jennings. "You just said he doesn't possess the requisite managerial experience, but then we get to the real issue here, which is you want to insult the man." //

These other panelists, who are clearly on the left, have no desire to put the blame on the institutions or the elitists who run them, elitists that many of these people are friends with. Notice that while they try to blame someone like Kennedy for spreading "misinformation," what they're ultimately saying is that you're still to blame for COVID spreading.

The institutions that told us to do all of these things ended up hurting us even more, as Jennings pointed out, but these elitists can't admit that. Notice they didn't linger on how the masks didn't work, or the lockdowns made it worse; the only attack they have is that "RFK. Jr. is a nut," and that our institutions aren't as trusted anymore because of nuts like him.

The Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine (AHM) is a medical professional organization that represents roughly 30,000 physicians, and they are trying to head Kamala Harris's radical abortion and other healthcare views off should she be elected president. In an open letter to Harris, they state that doctors at various points in their careers, are facing increasing pressure from "several major medical organizations" to perform controversial procedures like abortion, euthanasia, and gender transition that go against their religious or conscience beliefs. //

The problem, of course, is Kamala Harris' radical positions on abortion and transgender issues — the few positions she has not flipped-flopped on. During a recent NBC News interview, she was asked specifically about being in favor of any type of concessions regarding abortion, like religious exemptions. Her answer was ominous, even for those who might consider themselves pro-choice. Harris was not exactly pro-choice when it came to individual religious beliefs. She stated, “I don’t think we should be making concessions when we’re talking about a fundamental freedom to make decisions about your own body." //

Grazie Pozo Christie, M.D. @GChristiemd
·
I'm a Catholic physician. More to it, I'm an ETHICAL physician.
Kamala hates religious exemptions for conscientious physicians who REFUSE TO KILL.

Catholic and ethical OB GYN's practice excellent maternal care without performing abortions. The vast majority of Gyn's don't… Show more

SBA Pro-Life America @sbaprolife
.@KamalaHarris promises ‘freedom’ but then pledges to federally steamroll Americans into taking part in abortions against their will.

Docs must perform them, taxpayers must pay for them, for any reason, in all 50 states, no exceptions.
Embedded video
11:47 AM · Oct 23, 2024 //

Darren Casper @darrencasper
·
"...no conscience concessions should be afforded to health-care providers who object to performing abortions." - VP Harris
In other words, doctors, nurses & other medical providers should not be allowed to refuse to perform abortions because of their faith

washingtonpost.com
Opinion | Kamala Harris forgets to hide her abortion radicalism
8:57 AM · Nov 1, 2024

More than 86 percent of healthcare providers surveyed across the US are experiencing shortages of intravenous fluids after Hurricane Helene's rampage took out a manufacturing plant in western North Carolina that makes 60 percent of the country's supply.

IV fluids are used for everything from intravenous rehydration to drug delivery. The plant also made peritoneal dialysis fluids used to treat kidney failure. //

In one bright spot in the current disruptions, fears that Hurricane Milton would disrupt another IV fluid manufacturing plant in Florida were not realized this week. B. Braun Medical’s manufacturing site in Daytona Beach was not seriously impacted by the storm, the company announced, and production resumed normally Friday. Prior to the storm, with the help of the federal government, B. Braun reportedly moved more than 60 truckloads of IV fluid inventory north of Florida for safekeeping. That inventory will be returned to the Daytona facility, according to reporting by the Associated Press.

Hurricanes in the United States end up hundreds of times deadlier than the government calculates, contributing to more American deaths than car accidents or all the nation’s wars, a new study said.

The average storm hitting the U.S. contributes to the early deaths of 7,000 to 11,000 people over a 15-year period, which dwarfs the average of 24 immediate and direct deaths that the government counts in a hurricane’s aftermath, the study in Wednesday’s journal Nature concluded. Study authors said even with Hurricane Helene’s growing triple digit direct death count, many more people will die partly because of that storm in future years.

“Watching what’s happened here makes you think that this is going to be a decade of hardship on tap, not just what’s happening over the next couple of weeks,” said Stanford University climate economist Solomon Hsiang, a study co-author and a former White House science and technology official.

“After each storm there is sort of this surge of additional mortality in a state that’s been impacted that has not been previously documented or associated with hurricanes in any way,” Hsiang said.

Hsiang and University of California Berkeley researcher Rachel Young looked at hurricane deaths in a different way than previous studies, opting for a more long-term public health and economics-oriented analysis of what’s called excess mortality. They looked at states’ death rates after 501 different storms hitting the United States between 1930 and 2015. And what they found is that after each storm there’s a “bump” in death rates.

It’s a statistical signature that they see over and over, Hsiang said. Similar analyses are done for heat waves and other health threats like pollution and disease, he said. They compare to pre-storm times and adjust for other factors that could be causing changes in death rates, he said. Complicating everything is that the same places keep getting hit by multiple storms so there are death bumps upon death bumps.

Just how storms contribute to people’s deaths after the immediate impact is something that needs further study, Hsiang said. But he theorized it includes the health effects of stress, changes in the environment including toxins, people not being able to afford health care and other necessities because of storm costs, infrastructure damage and government changes in spending.

“When someone dies a few years after a hurricane hit them, the cause will be recorded as a heart attack, stroke or respiratory failure,” said Texas A&M University climate scientist Andrew Dessler, who wasn’t part of the study but has done similar studies on heat and cold deaths. “The doctor can’t possibly know that a hurricane contributed/triggered the illness. You can only see it in a statistical analysis like this.”

At the center of this debate is a bipartisan group of senators, informally dubbed the "Gang of Six," who are quietly working on potential changes to the 340B drug pricing program. On the Republican side, Senators John Thune (SD), Jerry Moran (KS), and Shelley Capito (WV) have joined their Democratic colleagues, Senators Debbie Stabenow (MI), Ben Cardin (MD), and Tammy Baldwin (WI), in tackling the future of this crucial program.

For those unfamiliar, the 340B program allows hospitals and healthcare providers in low-income and rural areas to purchase medications at discounted prices from pharmaceutical companies. These savings are vital, allowing hospitals to remain financially viable and continue providing services to underserved communities. The discounted drugs are often sold at regular prices to insured patients, allowing these healthcare providers to use the profit margin to cover costs, pay healthcare staff, and maintain operations.

Why does this matter? Because rural states like South Dakota, West Virginia, and Kansas rely heavily on the 340B program to keep their healthcare facilities open. For example, South Dakota, despite its sparse population, has 339 active 340B entities, providing much-needed healthcare access to its rural communities. West Virginia, one of the poorest states in the country, has over 1,060 of these entities, and Kansas has 946. These numbers underscore how essential the program is for ensuring that working-class and rural patients have access to hospital services.

But this isn't just about those three states—it's about the broader picture of healthcare access in rural America. Across the country, rural hospitals are struggling to keep their doors open, and the 340B program is a lifeline. Just in the past month, we’ve seen MercyOne closing its Primghar location in Iowa, the Regional Health System shutting down its Norman Regional Hospital in Oklahoma, and a temporary closure of a 340B facility in rural Ohio. Without 340B, these closures would likely become far more common.

The pharmaceutical industry, unsurprisingly, isn't a fan of the program. They’d rather see these discounts eliminated, arguing that hospitals should rely on government funding or higher taxes to stay afloat. However, the reality is that Big Pharma agreed to 340B in exchange for access to lucrative Medicare and Medicaid markets, and now they want to renege on that deal. If they succeed, rural communities could be left without access to healthcare, or taxpayers could be forced to foot the bill for direct government bailouts to struggling hospitals.

Women who do not receive treatment under the exceptions built into pro-life laws are victims of Democrat and media’s abortion deceptions. //

A closer look at the circumstances that led to the single mother’s passing, however, indicates that she died on the table during a surgery only needed because she suffered severe complications from ingesting abortion pills associated with sometimes fatal complications. Even the U.S. Food and Drug Administration admits nearly 1 in 25 women who take it will end up in the emergency room or hospitalized.

At nine weeks pregnant, Thurman traveled across state lines into North Carolina to get her twin babies dismembered. A traffic delay and scheduling conflict with the abortion facility, however, ultimately pushed her to accept a chemical abortion alternative. //

Thurman’s death was surely “preventable.” But the primary reason for it was not Georgia Republicans’ commitment to protecting life in the womb.

Instead, all evidence suggests Thurman’s death was due to medical negligence egged on by leftist fearmongering about lifesaving laws that provably protect women and babies from harm.

If ProPublica happens to be correct in its assumption that the doctors refused to operate on Thurman until it was too late because they didn’t want to lose their licenses, they are not only indicting the doctors, but also themselves, their Democrat accomplices, and the entire corporate media complex. //

“These laws do not restrict qualified, ethical doctors from caring for mothers and their babies. Louisiana laws and regulations ensure, expect, and empower physicians to use reasonable medical judgment to care for pregnant women — including those facing emergencies, miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies, and fetal abnormalities,” Murril wrote.

Women who do not receive treatment for pregnancy complications under the exceptions built into those laws are not simply victims of medical negligence. Their struggles and sometimes even deaths are directly exacerbated by the radical and deliberately deceptive abortion narratives touted by Democrats and their allies in the press.

Since China's so-called Peace Ark arrived last week, more than 2,000 South Africans have been treated on board - ranging from maternity check-ups and cataract surgeries to cupping therapy.

China enjoys a strong political partnership with South Africa, and this is Beijing's latest show of soft power. //

The African National Congress (ANC) says its National Health Insurance (NHI) scheme will be a huge improvement as all services at both public and private facilities will be free at the point of care – paid out of a central fund.

Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi has insisted it will still be implemented despite the party losing its parliamentary majority in May, and going into coalition with parties like the Democratic Alliance (DA) that oppose some aspects of the scheme.

It will cause a massive shake-up of the health sector, but critics fear it could prompt an exodus of health professionals to find employment abroad.

The scheme is being vociferously opposed by private health companies as it bars people from taking out private health insurance for treatment. //

The floating hospital leaves Cape Town on Thursday for Angola before moving on to several other countries. It has already visited the Seychelles, Tanzania, Madagascar and Mozambique - on this its 10th excursion since being commissioned in 2008.

The initiative is seen as a further step in China’s efforts to increase its influence on the African continent.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appeared on "Fox News Sunday" to talk about his plans to partner with Donald Trump to "Make America Healthy Again," and dropped some big truth bombs about the corruption and perverse incentives within the United States' public health agencies. //

"I wouldn't dismantle them. I would change the focus, and I would end the corruption. Right now, 75 percent of FDA’s budget is coming from pharmaceutical companies. That is a perverse incentive.

"In NIH, the - scientists and officials at NIH who work on drug development, incubate drugs for the pharmaceutical company, get to collect lifetime royalties from those products. These are regulators. They’re supposed to be looking for problems in those products.

"We have these agencies that have become sock puppets for the industries they’re supposed to regulate, so they're not really interested in public health.

"The most profitable thing today in America is a sick child. Everybody’s making money - the hospitals are making money, the pharmaceutical companies are making money; even the insurance companies make money.

"We need to end those perverse incentives, we need to get the corruption out of the FDA, out of NIH, out of the CDC, and make them function as they're supposed to function, which is to protect public health and to protect childrens' health.”

Activists with Reform Pharma, an initiative of the nonprofit Children's Health Defense, descended onto ComicCon in San Diego on Friday and Saturday. The group was adorned in pop culture costumes and distributed free copies of a full-color comic book based on the true events of the discovery of an illegal biolab last year, a story extensively reported by RedState. Over two days, activists held signs and handed out 10,000 copies of the new comic outside of the convention center.

The Reedley incident unfolded in this small Central Valley town near Fresno, where city code enforcement Officer Jesalyn Harper uncovered a clandestine bio-lab. Harper, a central figure in the comic book adaptation titled "The Known Unknown," along with other officers, discovered violations and suspicious activities in what was supposed to be a vacant warehouse. The illegal operation was linked to a group of Chinese nationals, including a fugitive.

Inside the lab, authorities found nearly 1,000 lab mice and a range of biohazardous materials, including unlabeled vials containing potentially infectious agents such as COVID-19. //

Additionally, the nonprofit has made the 16-page comic book available online to view, download, and share. https://reformpharmanow.org/comic/

The woman realized how serious her infection was once she was in custody.

Nearly 60 years after tobacco companies were first required to print warning labels on cigarettes to reduce smoking, statists salivate at the opportunity to pull the lever for labels on any other behavior they wish to deter, such as eating meat.

Last fall, a coalition of scientists proposed cigarette-style caution labels be placed on meat products for alleged hazards to the climate and human health. A study examining 1,000 meat-eating adults found labels espousing hazards to climate, health, and pandemics were enough to convince participants to opt for a non-meat meal. Given the success of warning labels at reducing cigarette use, researchers expressed optimism at the potential for similar warnings for deter meat consumption.

A dramatic drop in meat at the center of the American diet, however, offers far worse implications for public health than appreciated by the statist class of academics determined to manipulate behavior. The federal government’s recommendations to embrace a low-fat diet, for example, planted the roots for the twin epidemics of obesity and chronic disease overwhelming the health care system today after three generations dutifully followed the dietary guidelines. Americans increased consumption of grains and processed oils at the behest of the “experts” and now live in a nation where nearly 42 percent of adults 20 and older are obese and 6 in 10 suffer from at least one chronic illness.