HHS Sec. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Make Rural America Healthy Again: Part 2

Written by Chriss W. Street

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. commitment as U.S. Health as Human Services Secretary to “Make America Healthy Again” will be an economic and cultural boom for rural America.

Kennedy is a longtime critic of the agencies he would be overseeing, due to conflicts from regulatory capture. Health Affairs found between 2004 to 2020, 15% of HHS appointees prior to joining the department were employed in regulated Big Food and Big Pharma; and 32% of appointees exited HHS directly to Big Food and Big Pharma.

The worst HHS revolving doors were between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services; where over half of appointees went to work in regulated industry after their government employment.

Kennedy promises to demand National Institutes of Health (NIH) transparency, after an analysis found that of 8,000 NIH government funded health researchers between 2012 and 2019received an additional $188 million in Big Food and Big Pharmaroyalty cash.

Kennedy intends to revolutionize Medicare and Medicaid payment formulas. The American Medical Association lobbying group currently sets physician billing codes that incentivize costly surgeries and invasive procedures. The formulas underpay primary-care providers that achieve betterhealth outcomes through prevention and local care.

A 2019 study based on U.S. population data and published in JAMA Internal Medicine, found that every 10 additional primary-care physicians per 100,000 people was associated with a 51.5-day increase in life expectancy.

The Mountain Top Times reported that despite every $1 increase in rural primary care spending producing $13 in savings, rural communities have the highest health costs because they have the worst ratio of primary care physicians per 100,000 people.

Kennedy published a Wall Street Journal op-ed just before the elections, claiming he would “devote half of research budgets from the NIH toward preventive, alternative and holistic approaches to health,” arguing that “researchers don’t have enough incentive to study generic drugs and root-cause therapies that look at things like diet.”

As HHS Secretary, Kennedy and the FDA Commissioner, will have the authority to reorganize the agency without Congressional approval. He says he wants to fully eliminate “entire departments” at the FDA, listing as a top target the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition that are big supporters of corporate processed foods.

Kennedy has long advocated against various food additives, including artificial food dyes, various chemicals, and seed oils — arguing that they are harmful to the people’s health. He will seek to rewrite FDA “GRAS” regulations regarding additives and prevent companies from being able to self-certify the safety of their food ingredients.

He supports California’s ban on 4 additives linked to serious health problems: red dye No. 3, potassium bromate, brominated vegetable oil, and propylparaben.

As a supporter of rural Farm to Table, Kennedy drinksunpasteurized raw milk that he believes “advances human health.” He argues that many states now allow retail or on-farm sale of raw milk, but FDA “aggressive suppression” has banned interstate sales.

Kennedy posted on X that “FDA’s war on public health is about to end” citing “suppression” of: peptides, stem cells, hyperbaric therapies, chelating compounds, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, vitamins, clean foods, sunshine, nutraceuticals, exercise and anything else advancing human health and can’t be patented by Pharma.

RFK Jr. is a staunch opponent of direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical marketing that drugmakers spend billions of dollars each year. As HHS secretary, he would be in a position to direct the FDA to review and revise its guidelines regarding drug advertising.

Directly following the Trump’s November election, new FDA rules went into effect requiring Pharma companies to more clearly and directly inform consumers of medication risks and side effects in their TV ads.

The Digiday media and marketing industry spokespersonpromises a ban would likely face significant legal hurdles from the $1.6 trillion industry.