There is no question that the U.S. has a serious public health crisis compared to such similar industrialized countries as Sweden, Australia, and Japan. According to U.S. News & World Report, the U.S. is currently ranked a disgraceful nineteenth for public health care.
Today, 11.6% (2021) of all Americans are diabetics compared to the mid-1970s, which had a rate of “2.0 percent among women and 2.7 percent among men.” This increase in diabetes has been extremely alarming and costly.
The obesity rate among all adult Americans since 1975, which excludes the significant categories of being either “overweight” or “extremely obese,” has increased from 15% to an astounding 40.3% (August 2021 to August 2023) “with no significant differences between men and women.” This increase in obesity has been extremely alarming and costly.
Right now, only 23% of young Americans can currently enlist in the U.S. armed forces unless they are given a waiver because of chronic youth obesity, physical unfitness, mental health problems, which are often aggravated by illegal drug use. This increase in a lack of physical and mental fitness among young Americans has been extremely alarming and costly.
Unfortunately, our public health problems are legion and exist ad nauseam.
The Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), which is a Cabinet position, oversees “more than 100 programs across its 13 operating divisions or agencies.” HHS supervises such well known agencies as the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Indian Health Service (IHS), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) and most importantly the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which is responsible for “overseeing insurance for nearly half the country” plus seven other huge agencies.
The gargantuan HHS employs approximately 83,000 people and has an annual budget of $1.7 trillion (2022).
Despite having an estimated net worth ranging from $20 million to $30 million, HHS Secretary nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has no administrative experience in supervising 5,000 employees let alone 83,000 with a gigantic $1.7 trillion budget. Although his past anti-vaccine skepticism has been highly problematic and controversial, what greatly concerns me was that Kennedy was a heroin addict for sixteen years from 1968 to 1984. It was not until he was finally convicted of a “felony charge of possessing heroin aboard an airline flight to Rapid City” in South Dakota in 1984 that he started drug rehabilitation. However, I do acknowledge that Kennedy has been sober for the past forty years.
His first cousin, Carolyn Kennedy Schlossberg, the daughter of former president John F. Kennedy (1961-63), Obama’s ambassador to Japan from 2013-17 and Biden’s ambassador to Australia from 2022-24, scathingly called Kennedy on January 25 “unfit [my emphasis] to be the nation’s health secretary.” She cited “his lack of experience, misinformed [my emphasis] views on vaccines and personal attributes” along with leading “other family members “‘down the path of drug addiction [my emphasis].’”
Schlossberg also stated how her cousin disgustingly and sadistically once “enjoyed showing off how he put baby chickens and mice in [a] blender to feed his hawks.”
Schlossberg most disturbingly stated how her highly charismatic cousin, “‘Bobby preys on the desperation of parents of sick children — vaccinating his own children while building a following by hypocritically [my emphasis] discouraging other parents from vaccinating theirs.’” She is especially alluding to his past vaccine skepticism in regard to autism, measles, water fluoridation and other diseases.
In my opinion, Robert F Kennedy, Jr.’s past hypocrisy toward vaccines, nicotine patches, and his lack of experience in administering a massive organization such as HHS disqualifies him from Trump’s Cabinet. At best he could serve as a deputy secretary to one of the thirteen agencies within HHS, which requires no Senate confirmation.
Kennedy may very well have the right message about ultra processed foods, food dyes, pesticides, soil conservation, diabetes, obesity and Big Pharma in his “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) agenda. However, his sixteen-year history of heroin addiction, possessing no scientific credentials, having no major administrative experience and especially being a decades-long vaccine skeptic, disqualifies him from being our next HHS secretary.
Kennedy is simply the wrong person to lead the Department of Health and Human Services and “Make America Healthy Again.”