Latest news with #RobertKennedy
Fox News
28-05-2025
- Business
- Fox News
SEN. RAND PAUL: Kennedy is confronting 'corrupt' health agencies to Make America Healthy Again
Print Close By Rand Paul Published May 28, 2025 Recently, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee held a hearing with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy. Let's just say there was no shortage of spirited debate between Kennedy and my Democratic colleagues. Kennedy is leading a bold effort across his agency and others in the healthcare sphere of the administration — what he calls "MAHA" short for "Make America Healthy Again." I am a strong supporter of Kennedy and his MAHA efforts. So are a vast majority of Americans. Why? Because Kennedy, like myself, has seen the problem plainly: our federal health agencies — the FDA, CDC, NIH and HHS — have become too cozy with the industries they are supposed to regulate, too resistant to new ideas and too buried in their own bureaucratic bloat. DOCTORS WARN OF 'TRIFECTA' OF CHRONIC ILLNESSES PLAGUING AMERICANS AFTER MAHA REPORT Instead of protecting public health, they have helped usher in an epidemic of obesity, chronic illness, mental health issues and disease. Government failure in this arena shouldn't shock anyone — it's the usual cocktail of corruption, complacency, greed and incompetence. In a House hearing, one Democrat member challenged Kennedy's record and accomplishments in his short tenure at HHS. Kennedy's reply? "You've worked for 20 years on getting food dye out. Give me credit, I got it done in 100 days!" — and without any new government regulations. That kind of decisive action is exactly what we need to improve the health of Americans. I bring this up to say that I'm pleased with both the breadth and the speed with which HHS and other agencies under MAHA are moving to change things. MAHA is reexamining the childhood vaccine schedule, scrutinizing food additives and advancing a range of reforms that may seem small individually but together add up to meaningful improvements in the health of all Americans. MAKE AMERICA HEALTHY AGAIN: TIMELINE OF THE MAHA MOVEMENT What's most notable about this movement is how it brought together three somewhat distinct groups for change against an entrenched establishment. Kennedy, once a Democrat, galvanized support from left of center. Libertarians, who've long fought for medical and food freedom, have joined as well. Lastly, MAHA was embraced by President Donald Trump in his campaign. Together, these three groups are charting a new course. FDA'S LATEST MAHA MOVE WOULD WIPE OUT KIDS' FLUORIDE PRESCRIPTIONS AS HEALTH RISK EVIDENCE MOUNTS No prior administration has ever dared to confront Big Pharma head on like this — not rhetorically, not legislative, not structurally, and no other administration has ever empowered its agencies to do so. That's now changing. This is what real leadership looks like. The bully pulpit being used to great effect. We are seeing companies across America phase out harmful chemicals from things like fast food fries and replacing them with healthy beef tallow. Others are voluntarily swapping artificial dyes and sugars for healthier, more natural ingredients for their products. CLICK HERE FOR MORE FOX NEWS OPINION But the bully pulpit has to be matched with true regulatory reform, legislative victories and a coordinated team effort in order to make real, lasting change. RFK JR'S HEALTH AGENDA GAINS POPULARITY AMONG STATE LAWMAKERS One lesson we must never forget and can't ever let happen again is the authoritarian way our government responded to COVID-19. From vaccine mandates, forced masking and mask misinformation, to business closures and failed virtual learning, the government massively mishandled the pandemic. Dr. Anthony Fauci, public health agencies, and school boards alike failed the American people. That's why I'm most grateful to be working with President Trump, Secretary Kennedy and a host of others in the administration to dig up what was hidden, to find what was never produced previously. What exactly went wrong and who was responsible? CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP What's most notable about this movement is how it brought together three somewhat distinct groups for change against an entrenched establishment. We will continue to get to the bottom of it, but even in a short time, we have already banned gain-of-function research and restored congressional oversight of how scientific funding and studies are allocated. There is still a lot of work left to do, but the progress so far has been both swift and substantive. I look forward to continuing this vital work in partnership with the Trump administration and putting the health and freedom of the American people ahead of bureaucratic power and special interests. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM SEN. RAND PAUL Print Close URL
The Guardian
27-05-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Argentina ratifies decision to withdraw from WHO as RFK Jr visits Buenos Aires
Argentina has ratified its decision to withdraw from the World Health Organization (WHO) during a visit to Buenos Aires by the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr. The decision to pull out of the WHO was initially announced in February by Argentina's president, Javier Milei, following in the footsteps of his US counterpart Donald Trump who had said in January the United States would withdraw. Milei's government justified its departure from the UN agency in a statement on Monday. 'The WHO's prescriptions do not work because they are not based on science but on political interests and bureaucratic structures that refuse to review their own mistakes,' the statement said. Buenos Aires has previously accused the agency of 'disastrous' management during the Covid pandemic with its 'caveman quarantine'. The announcement came as Kennedy and the Argentinian health minister, Mario Lugones, met to define 'a joint work agenda that will strengthen transparency and trust in the health system'. 'Together with Robert Kennedy, we believe in the future of collaboration in global health. We have similar visions about the path forward,' Lugones said. Kennedy, a controversial Trump pick for health secretary given his vaccine skepticism, is also expected to meet with Milei during his visit. In a video broadcast at the WHO's annual assembly last week, he urged other governments to withdraw from the agency and create other institutions. In his speech, Kennedy alleged that the UN health agency was under undue influence from China, gender ideology and the pharmaceutical industry. The Argentinian government also announced a 'structural review' of national health agencies to 'organize, update, and make transparent the structures and processes' of the health system 'that for years operated with overlaps, outdated regulations and limited oversight'.
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
The hidden elitism of RFK's MAHA movement is making America more unhealthy
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy has a well-documented history of lying, and so it was reasonable to believe he was lying again during his January confirmation hearing when he said he is "not anti-vaccine" and promised he wasn't going to take vaccines away. Still, it's both alarming and remarkable how swiftly he's moved to take away COVID-19 boosters that have helped millions of Americans avoid becoming seriously ill from this still-novel virus. Last week, the Food and Drug Administration announced plans to deny access to the vaccine for people under 65 without an underlying health condition. This fits in with Kennedy's long-standing history of eugenics-tinged notions that disease is a good thing, falsely claiming that it strengthens the gene pool, and insinuating that it makes survivors stronger. (In reality, vaccines boost overall immunity while disease often weakens it.) But the particulars of the policy also reveal something about Kennedy's reactionary class politics, which contradict his family's history of progressivism. As Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo noted on Bluesky, "I strongly suspect you're going to have doctors leaning forward on what constitutes a preexisting condition in this case." Which is to say, people who want the booster can get around the FDA ban by asking their doctor for a prescription. But as many folks, including myself, immediately pointed out, forcing people to go to the doctor requires time and usually money. Previously, most people could get the vaccine, often with no copay, by breezing into a pharmacy while grocery shopping. The people who don't have the time or money to go through the onerous process of a doctor's appointment are more likely to be working class or poor. Even middle-class people who can afford a copay struggle to find the time to do so. This policy is turning what was once a 10-minute process into a half-day ordeal, if you're lucky. In effect, Kennedy isn't banning the vaccine — he's just making sure that only well-to-do people like himself have "Make America Healthy Again" slogan — shortened to "MAHA" — has a lot of surface appeal. Worse, Kennedy is smart about floating attention-grabbing policy ideas, like banning artificial food dyes, that are unlikely to happen but snag a lot of headlines, misleading people into thinking he's serious about improving public health. Looking away from Kennedy's empty, lie-laden rhetoric to his actions, however, and another narrative emerges: He's taking away health care, with a special emphasis on limiting access for women, minorities, children, and working people. On the latest episode of my YouTube show, "Standing Room Only," journalist Lindsay Beyerstein and I discussed how much Kennedy is taking away. Of course, the most prominent assault from Republicans on health care is Donald Trump's new tax bill, which aims to kick over 10 million eligible people off Medicaid. The mechanism for cheating people out of their coverage is phony "work requirements." In reality, it's a paperwork requirement that uses red tape to keep eligible people from accessing benefits. 'It's going to be creating this administrative bureaucracy and devastating amount of poor people who, despite being eligible, are going to lose coverage so that Congress can fund tax cuts for the wealthiest,' MaryBeth Musumeci of George Washington University told the Washington Post. Ironically, the people most affected will often be those who work full time, because they have the least free time to navigate the paperwork labyrinth. Kennedy, who grew up in a famously progressive household, surely knows this. But he cynically joined in the lie that eligible people are "cheating" the system by penning a New York Times op-ed earlier this month that falsely claimed "able-bodied adults on welfare are not working at all" and "we don't even ask them to." Kennedy and his co-authors hope readers are picturing lazy young men who refuse to work so they can sit around playing video games. We know this because Jesse Watters rolled out the blunter form of this message on Fox News, claiming Medicaid recipients "play softball on the weekend, sell ecstasy on the side" and don't "even look for a job." As if young men don't have any need for money other than for paying their medical bills. But, as John Knefel at Media Matters explained, "92% of people on Medicaid are working, have a disability, or are performing duties — such as going to school or caregiving — that could qualify for an exemption from meeting work requirements." Those 92% are in danger of losing access because of the paperwork maze requirements. Of the other 8%, four out of five are women. And they aren't young or lazy. On average, they're 41 years old and were recently forced out of the workforce, often to care for family members, especially elderly ones. Most have only a high school degree or less, and their median annual income is $0. That's not a typo. This is a group of very poor women. This is where the GOP's traditional classism and racism meld with Kennedy's unsubtle eugenicist impulses. He speaks frequently of disabled people as if they are useless parasites. During his confirmation hearing, Kennedy said this about people with disabilities or chronic illnesses, a category which includes anyone with diabetes or asthma: "A healthy person has a thousand dreams. A sick person has only one." That was his scripted remark, and even then, he was arguing that a person with any chronic health condition, from someone in a wheelchair to someone who needs daily medication to manage depression, does not have a life worth living. Punishing for the "sin" of caring for disabled family members fits into this bleak, anti-human worldview. It will not make America healthy to let people die because they don't have the wealth to pay for health care out of pocket. Social Darwinism was a bad idea in the 1900s. It's even dumber now. We have decades of medical evidence showing that robust, functioning health care systems are how you improve public health. The entire history of public health research shows that the "rising tide" model isn't just more humane, but more effective than the "culling the herd" model. Sickness spreads, often directly through viruses or indirectly by depleting family resources, putting stress on people that degrades their health. Taking away health care from the people Kennedy thinks are the undeserving sick will not make others healthier. That's not even really the goal of the Medicaid cuts, which are about funding massive tax cuts for the rich. Pulling a few food dyes out of your snacks is no substitute for what Americans need, which is the health care support for all to live full and productive lives.
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
RFK Jr misleads on chickenpox vaccine use in Europe
Kennedy's claim came during a May 14, 2025 hearing of the House Appropriations Committee, when Democratic Congressman Mark Pocan asked if he would vaccinate his own children against chickenpox. The secretary did not answer directly, saying: "I don't want to give advice. I can tell you, in Europe, they don't use the chickenpox vaccine, specifically because the pre-clinical trial shows that when you inoculate the population for chickenpox, you get shingles in older people, which is more dangerous" (archived here). Kennedy expressed repeated skepticism over vaccines throughout his more than ten-year career as chairman Children's Health Defense, an organization AFP has regularly fact-checked for spreading misinformation about vaccination. Since taking over at HHS, he has continued to send mixed messages about vaccines that boast long safety records. His response to a measles outbreak in Texas that left two children dead, for example, has been criticized for underemphasizing the efficacy of vaccines that protect against the virus. His agency is also seeking to introduce new testing requirements for all vaccines, which experts worry could make updates for existing shots less available and more expensive. AFP's review of vaccine recommendations across Europe show his comments about chickenpox and shingles are inaccurate. A 2022 study found that 28 European countries administer the shots, with 16 using the MMRV, a vaccine that protects against measles, mumps, rubella and chickenpox (archived here and here). According to the European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, an agency of the European Union, the chickenpox vaccine is mandatory as of May 2025 for young children in Hungary, Italy and Latvia (archived here). Varicella, commonly referred to as chickenpox, and herpes zoster, also called shingles, are both caused by the varicella-zoster virus (VZV). The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says anyone infected with varicella can develop herpes zoster. While children generally recover from chickenpox in four to seven days, the disease can lead to serious complications, and it is more dangerous for adults. Pregnant individuals are particularly vulnerable, as the virus can harm the fetus (archived here and here). The United States began vaccinating against chickenpox in 1995, making it the first country to add the shot to its routine childhood immunization schedule (archived here). As of 2025, there are two chickenpox vaccines licensed in the United States (archived here). The vaccine's implementation dramatically cut hospitalizations and deaths linked to chickenpox infections, José Romero, a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Infectious Diseases, told AFP (archived here). "We have a vaccine that is effective, that is safe, that's been tested for over a decade -- over two decades -- and that has really done away with the number of hospitalizations, cases and deaths due to chickenpox," he said May 20, 2025. The CDC estimates that in its first 25 years, the vaccination program prevented 91 million cases of chickenpox while also saving $23.4 billion in healthcare costs (archived here). The agency also says children who get the chickenpox vaccine "have a lower risk of herpes zoster when compared with children infected with wild-type VZV" (archived here). Like chickenpox, shingles causes a painful, itchy rash, but it tends to take two to four weeks to heal. For some 10 to 18 percent of people, the infection results in a more serious long-term nerve pain known as postherpetic neuralgia (archived here). An estimated one million cases of shingles occur annually in the United States. The CDC says the rate among US adults "gradually increased over a long period" for reasons unknown, but that it has "recently plateaued or declined" (archived here). Some evidence has suggested that for adults who had chickenpox in childhood, later exposure to children infected with VZV would boost immunity and prove protective against shingles. But a study from the United Kingdom showed the impact may not be as robust as initially thought (archived here and here). US researchers separately followed the impact of their country's vaccination program from 1998 to 2019. They found that modeling, which predicted the program could precipitate a rise in shingles cases among adults who had previously had chickenpox, was not supported by the real-world data (archived here). They also found that in addition to directly reducing chickenpox morbidity and mortality, the vaccination program "reduced herpes zoster incidence among children and adolescents born in the vaccine era." When the United Kingdom's Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation decided to recommend adding the chickenpox vaccine to its schedule of shots for children in 2023, it specifically referenced the study from the United States as alleviating concerns for older populations who have recovered from a varicella infection (archived here). Ellen Rafferty, a researcher at the University of Alberta (archived here), also told the BBC in 2024 that her modeling study from Canada did not show "conclusive evidence" of a surge in shingles cases following the introduction of a chickenpox vaccine program (archived here and here). For adults concerned about shingles, the United States recommends that those over the age of 50 receive a vaccine (archived here). A single shot against the virus first became available in 2006, and in 2017, another vaccine that does not use a live virus earned approval (archived here). Read more of AFP's reporting on vaccine misinformation here.
The Guardian
13-05-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Drug price cuts: what is Trump planning and what will it mean for big pharma?
Donald Trump has used his executive powers to order sweeping cuts to the price of prescription drugs in the US, in an effort to bring them in line with other developed countries. The plans, first announced in a social media post on Sunday, triggered a sharp fall in drugmakers' share prices on Monday. However, these later reversed amid growing scepticism that the shake-up would be as severe as promised. His order directs the US health secretary, Robert Kennedy, to send price targets to the pharmaceutical industry and kick off a round of negotiations within 30 days to reduce prices from their current levels. The US currently pays by far the most for its medications. If talks hit an impasse, Kennedy is instructed to enforce the 'most favoured nation' pricing model and limit US prices to the lowest rates paid by other wealthy countries. At a press conference, the US president said this would amount to price cuts of between 59% and 90%. Health officials said that, unlike a similar push in Trump's first term, the new policy would target not just Medicare, the US government-funded programme that covers people aged 65 and older, but also Medicaid, for people on low incomes, and treatments covered by private health insurance. Officials also said it was fair to assume that slimming drugs known as GLP-1s, such as Wegovy, Ozempic and Zepbound, would be included. Trump mentioned the 'fat shot drug' and said he had become aware of the huge price differences when a businessman told him he had bought Ozempic for $88 in London, but was paying $1,300 for it in New York. Trump's attempts during the final months of his first term to bring down drug prices were struck down in federal court. That 'most favoured nation' plan would have tied reimbursements for 50 drugs by Medicare to the lowest prices paid by certain other countries. A federal judge blocked the move after ruling that the administration had failed to give the public a chance to comment. The Biden administration dropped the proposal under pressure from hospitals and drug companies, but last year Medicare started negotiating some prices for the first time, under the Inflation Reduction Act. There is not a lot of detail in the executive order and it is unclear what impact, if any, it would have on millions of Americans with private health insurance. The federal government has the most power to influence the prices of drugs covered by Medicare and Medicaid. Experts said the new policy kept pressure on pharmacy benefits managers (PMBs), the 'middlemen' such as Cigna, CVS, and UnitedHealth that negotiate drug prices with pharma companies in the US. The White House wants drugmakers to sell more products directly to patients. The main US lobby group, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhMRA), said the US was the only country in the world that let PMBs, insurers and hospitals take 50% of every dollar spent on medicines, and that the amount going to middlemen often exceeded the price in Europe. 'Giving this money directly to patients will lower their medicine costs and significantly reduce the gap with European prices,' it said. The pharmaceutical industry is likely to push back hard against the proposed shake-up. The US health policy research group KFF told NBC News it 'would expect the drug industry to throw every legal argument at this proposal'. However, AstraZeneca and the Wegovy and Ozempic maker, Novo Nordisk, struck a conciliatory note, saying they would engage with policymakers. The Medicare and Medicaid programmes together account for two-fifths of US drug sales. Analysts at UBS have calculated that European drugmakers could see an average hit of 6% to profits if 'most favoured nation' prices are introduced on the top 50 drugs in the US, while US companies would face a 10% drop. Bristol Myers Squibb and Pfizer would be worst-hit among the American pharma companies and Eli Lilly least-affected, while in Europe AstraZeneca and Novo Nordisk would take the brunt and GSK and Sanofi would suffer the least. PhRMA has warned that the planned price cuts would 'jeopardise the hundreds of billions [of dollars that] our member companies are planning to invest in America'. Profits from US drugs prices have long helped fund the development of new treatments used around the world. In recent weeks big pharma companies have announced a spate of big investments, adding up to close to $200bn, as they sought to head off a threatened sector-specific tariff. As the US remains the biggest market for most international drugmakers, it is unlikely that Trump's order will derail those investment plans. Governments determine the price of medications in the UK, the EU and other countries by negotiating directly with pharma companies, and often pay less. Drugmakers offer tiered pricing, with rates varying depending on the destination country and bigger discounts for poorer nations. Wegovy has a list price of $1,349 for a month's supply in the US, while in the UK a starting dose costs from £130 a month, and in Germany the drug costs between €170 and €300 a month. The Democratic senator Bernie Sanders, a presidential candidate in 2020, has called the US 'Novo Nordisk's cash cow'. A 2021 study found that drug prices in the US were 'substantially higher' than those in each of 32 other countries. Compared with all those countries combined, US prices were 256% higher. It seems that a sector-specific levy is off the table, and products have been spared the 25% tariffs that other sectors such as steel, aluminium and cars have endured. Trump hinted at a reprieve earlier this month, saying the US administration would give companies 'a lot of time' to move their operations to the country before facing a 'tariff wall'.
