Mr. Lambert: Every time I hear a conservative use the word “freedom,” I check my wallet to see if it’s still there. That’s why the catchphrase “health freedom” leaves me cold. Still, one way to look at the 2024 election is as a total rejection of the PMC by a significant number of voters, among them medical professionals. Now let’s see how MAHA works. example:” [Means] They blamed Big Pharma and the agriculture industry for the country’s rise in obesity, depression, and chronic health conditions. ” Tell me it can’t be (or not worth trying).
Stephanie Armor, senior health policy correspondent for KFF Health News, talks about the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid, Medicare, Covid-19, abortion, Washington, D.C. politics and regulation, and how patients, They reported on health care providers and how it would affect their medical care. industry. Originally published on KFF Health News.
Within days of Donald Trump’s election victory, healthcare entrepreneur Callie Means turned to social media to crowdsource advice.
“The first 100 days,” said Means, a former consultant for a major pharmaceutical company who uses social platform X to draw attention to chronic disease. “What should we do to reform the FDA?”
The question was more than just rhetoric. Means is among a cadre of medical business leaders and fringe doctors who are influencing President Donald Trump’s focus on health care policy.
Trump’s return to the White House has given Means and other players in the field greater influence in shaping the new administration and its federal agencies’ initial health policy. It’s also given new momentum to Make America Healthy Again (MAHA), a controversial movement that challenges conventional thinking about public health and chronic disease.
Its adherents advocate their ideals with terms like “health freedom” and “true health.” Their causes range from reviewing certain agricultural subsidies, firing National Institutes of Health employees, reconsidering childhood immunization schedules, and banning the marketing of ultra-processed foods to children on television.
Public health leaders say the emerging Trump administration’s interest in promoting sometimes unorthodox concepts is undermining decades of scientific progress and fueling the rise in preventable diseases. , states that the consequences could be catastrophic. They worry that the administration’s support could undermine trust in public health institutions.
Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said he welcomes broad intellectual and scientific debate, but that President Trump is treating untested and unproven public health ideas he has heard as if they were facts. He said he was concerned that people would just parrot it as if it were something that happened.
In his experience, he said, people with unproven ideas will have his ear and a “very big bully pulpit.” “Because he’s the president, people will trust that he won’t say anything that isn’t true. “This president will.”
However, those in the MAHA camp have a completely different view. They say they have been vilified as dangerous for questioning the status quo. They argue that elections provide a huge opportunity to shape politics and policy without compromising public health. Instead, it claims to restore trust in federal health agencies that have lost public support during the pandemic.
“This could be a great strategy by the right,” said Peter McCullough, a cardiologist who has come under fire for saying coronavirus vaccines are unsafe. He was explaining some of the election season messages that brought their perspective into the mainstream. “The right was claiming we cared about health care and environmental issues. The left was pursuing abortion rights and negative campaigning against Trump. But everyone needs to take care of their health. Health should be independent of politics.”
The movement is primarily anti-regulation, anti-big government, whether it’s raw milk or drug approvals, but more regulation is needed to implement changes. Many of its concepts intersect to include ideas that have also been supported by parts of the far left.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the anti-vaccination activist whom President Trump nominated for Secretary of Health and Human Services, has fired hundreds of people at the National Institutes of Health, removed fluoride from water and banned federal restrictions on psychedelic therapies. We are calling for stronger support. , relaxing restrictions on raw milk that could expose consumers to food poisoning if consumed. Its sales led to federal raids on farms for not complying with food safety regulations.
Means pushed for top-down changes at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which he says have been adopted by the food industry.
He himself has no scientific or medical training, but says people are less likely to die from COVID-19 if they are “metabolically healthy” in terms of eating, sleeping, exercise and stress management habits. said. Approximately 85% of deaths and health care costs in the United States are related to preventable food-borne metabolic conditions.
Means, co-founder of TrueMed, a company that helps consumers access pre-tax savings and reimbursement programs for supplements, sleep aids, exercise equipment and more, has had behind-closed-doors conversations with dozens of lawmakers. He says he has done so. He also said he was instrumental in bringing RFK Jr. and Trump together. RFK Jr. endorsed President Trump in August after ending his independent presidential campaign.
“Actually, I’ve had this vision for a year now. It may sound very rumored, but I was in the tent sweating with him at a campaign event in Austin six months ago. And I just had this strong vision that he was on Trump’s side,” Means recently said on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast.
The former self-proclaimed never Trumper said he felt it was a powerful moment after President Trump’s first assassination attempt. Mr. Means called RFK Jr. and worked with conservative political commentator Tucker Carlson to connect him to the former president. Means said Trump and RFK Jr. then had conversations over the next few weeks about topics such as childhood obesity and the causes of infertility.
“He and I really felt that this could be a realignment of American politics,” Means said.
His sister, Casey Means, a Stanford-trained physician and co-author with her brother of Good Energy, a book on improving metabolic health, is also involved in the effort. They blamed big pharmaceutical companies and the agricultural industry for the rise in obesity, depression and chronic health conditions in the country. They also raised questions about vaccines.
“Okay, maybe one vaccine doesn’t cause autism, but what about 20 vaccines by 18 months?” said Casey Means on the Joe Rogan podcast. He spoke with his brother in an episode of
The movement, which challenges what its supporters call “the cult of science,” gained significant momentum during the pandemic in the wake of the backlash against vaccines and mask mandates that flourished under the Biden administration. Many of its supporters say they have gained supporters who believe they are being misinformed about the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines.
In July 2022, Deborah Birx, the Trump administration’s coronavirus response coordinator, said on Fox News that vaccines are indeed effective, but said, “We are overestimating them.” ”
Anthony Fauci, who advised President Trump during the pandemic, said in December 2020 that the vaccine could reduce COVID-19 infections in the same way that the polio vaccine helped reduce COVID-19 infections. Said to be a game changer.
But it eventually became clear that the shots do not necessarily prevent infection and that the booster’s effectiveness wears off over time, leading some conservatives to disillusion and interest in the health freedom movement. He claims to have increased it.
Federal health officials say the rollout of coronavirus vaccines marks a turning point in the pandemic, saying vaccinations teach the immune system to recognize and fight the causative virus, reducing its severity.
After the election, some Trump supporters, including Elon Musk, called for Fauci to be prosecuted. Fauci declined to comment.
Joe Grogan, a former White House Domestic Policy Council director and Trump aide, said conservatives are trying to clarify why government control of health care is troubling.
“Two things have happened: the government has completely overreached, lied about a lot of things during COVID-19, and shown no compassion for the needs of people outside of COVID-19. ” he said. “RFK Jr. came in and said very simply that we can’t trust government health care, we’re spending money and it’s not making anyone healthier. In some cases. That could make people sick.”
The MAHA movement draws on many of the unconventional health concepts that have become darlings of the left, such as promoting organic foods and food as medicine. But in a polarized political environment, some medical analysts say the growing rise of leaders who challenge the so-called cult of science could lead to further confusion and division among the public. do.
Jeffrey Singer, a surgeon and senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian public policy research group, said in a statement that he agrees with RFK Jr.’s focus on reevaluating the public health system. But he says it comes with risks.
“We are concerned that many of Mr. RFK Jr.’s claims about vaccine safety, environmental toxins, and food additives lack evidence, are increasing public anxiety, and are contributing to declining childhood vaccination rates,” he said. “
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, measles vaccination rates among U.S. kindergarteners fell from 95.2% in 2019-20 to 92.7% in 2023-24. The agency announced that approximately 280,000 kindergartens are at risk.
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