Do You Acknowledge This Anti-Vaxxer Child Onesie?

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Donald Trump’s nominee to move the U.S. Division of Well being and Human Providers, has vowed to resolve America’s “continual well being epidemic,” and, in so doing, “Make America Wholesome Once more.” A part of this nationwide well being glow-up involves bringing new levels of transparency to the federal authorities, Kennedy has argued, which is ironic as a result of, throughout his affirmation this week, Kennedy made it as clear as mud what all people ought to count on from his tenure at America’s most vital well being company.

Throughout Wednesday’s listening to, Kennedy refused to reply primary questions on quite a lot of topics. Would he assist bans on abortion drugs, like mifepristone? Did he imagine college shootings have been brought on by anti-depressants? Would he assist making cuts to Medicaid? Did he assist extending set-to-expire tax credit which have allowed low-income Individuals entry to healthcare? In all of those points, Kennedy most well-liked equivocations to definitive solutions.

There was one query, nevertheless, that Kennedy was capable of reply with relative certainty: “Is healthcare a human proper?” Bernie Sanders requested the nominee, at one level. The reply was easy: No. The HHS head nominee stated that healthcare was not a human proper in the identical means that, say, free speech was a human proper as a result of, not like free speech, healthcare prices cash and cash, as everyone knows, is the one factor that issues in America.

Kennedy was additionally handled to a grilling from Sanders a few web site related to a corporation that Kennedy beforehand based—the Youngsters’s Well being Protection—that sells anti-vax child garments. One of many points at play throughout Kennedy’s listening to was whether or not he would proceed to revenue from his anti-vaccination “activism” throughout and after his public service. Kennedy famous that he had just lately parted methods with the group in preparation for his federal place. Sanders then switched techniques. “Are you supportive of those onesies?” Sanders hilariously yelled at Kennedy, because the flustered nominee sputtered evasively. Sanders’s onesie digression added some much-needed levity to the listening to, which was in any other case a grim spectacle of political maneuvering.

Whereas his critics see him as a wacky ideologue, Kennedy’s supporters largely view him as a valiant subversive devoted to preventing the monied forces that rule the meals and healthcare industries. I submit, nevertheless, that Kennedy is definitely neither of this stuff. As an alternative, I imagine he’s simply one other power-hungry twit with a penchant for grifterism who needs to carry workplace and is keen to do no matter is important to perform that purpose.

Certainly, there’s at the moment no proof that Trump plans to do something to “make America wholesome once more,” or to advance Kennedy’s weird well being crusades, or to let him “go wild,” as he previously quipped. For example, one of many areas of the meals business that RFK has usually espoused concern for is seed oils, which Kennedy has claimed are harmful to Americans’ health. Trump just lately picked Kailee Tkacz Buller to be the chief of employees on the U.S. Division of Agriculture (USDA). Buller’s earlier place was because the President and CEO of the Nationwide Oilseed Processors Affiliation (NOPA). That is in line with Trump’s first administration when he employed Buller and different lobbyists from the snack meals and corn syrup industries to put in writing Individuals’ dietary tips and helm pivotal meals businesses. Trump additionally famously likes snack foods, so it’s unclear why anybody would assume he can be harsh on the businesses chargeable for creating them.

On the whole, Kennedy has revealed himself to be full-of-shit phony who will betray any and all of his most ceaselessly espoused beliefs only for an opportunity to suckle on the energy teat. Certainly, he in some way managed to spend over a decade lobbying on behalf of the environmental motion, solely to show round and endorse a political chief who has brazenly acknowledged he wants to gut the EPA, politicize disaster relief funds, and open up public lands for drilling and improvement. Since being supplied a high spot in Trump’s administration, he has additionally considerably backtracked on his vaccine skepticism, and reined in his extra kooky speaking factors, in an obvious effort to skate via his present affirmation course of and permit himself a clean transition.

What turned obvious at Kennedy’s listening to, nevertheless, isn’t simply that the person is keen to compromise most of his beliefs for entry to energy. It additionally turned obvious that he’s greater than keen to behave as a surrogate for the true policymakers within the Trump administration: the billionaire-backed libertarian proper that wishes to smash the federal forms, dismantle public welfare applications, and return all the cash and the ability to the personal sector. Kennedy brazenly criticized government-administered healthcare applications like Medicaid and the Reasonably priced Care Act and appeared to suggest that these applications must be discarded for purely market-based approaches to well being companies.

Kennedy additionally pimped Medicare Advantage, {a partially} privatized model of Medicare that has been broadly criticized for being harder to make use of and offering much less protection. “We have to hearken to what individuals favor to be on,” Kennedy stated, which is humorous since there was an outpouring of public anger in opposition to the Medicare Benefit plans, which have been characterised by sufferers as shitty and entrapping.

Nonetheless, that is all very a lot the road of the individuals who helped Trump get elected and who’re at the moment busy writing his insurance policies. Mission 2025’s plan for HHS states a want to push Americans into Medicare Advantage plans which, The Nation notes, can be “a boon to personal insurance coverage firms, because it basically privatizes the wildly in style public program.” The mission has additionally recommended instituting work necessities for Medicaid recipients, suggests the abolition of the Head Begin program, would aggressively go after abortion entry, and would, usually, work to undermine the general public sector’s position in healthcare administration.