Throughout his confirmation process, Kennedy focused on the need to address nutrition and food systems to improve the country’s overall wellbeing — a reframing of the usual health policy debates in Congress. The Senate’s Make America Healthy Again Caucus, formed to back the policy goals of incoming HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was readying legislation as the Senate confirmed the nominee Thursday.
Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), founder of the caucus, described a “package of bills” as he was going to vote to confirm Kennedy. He said the bills sought to improve the nation’s nutrition and agriculture systems, with a focus on soil health, regenerative farming and reworking the dietary guidelines. “We do need to prioritize and organize,” Marshall said of the caucus’ legislative plans. Marshall didn’t share a firm timeline for submitting the legislation but suggested Congress needed to move quickly on the MAHA agenda.
Throughout his confirmation process, Kennedy focused on the need to address nutrition and food systems to improve the country’s overall wellbeing — a reframing of the usual health policy debates in Congress. And he was backed by a movement of MAHA supporters, who argue the health system should focus on nutrition and exercise more than pharmaceutical solutions. Senators said they saw the power in the MAHA movement, which flooded their offices with calls and emails urging support for Kennedy.
Comment: The confirmation of RFK Jr has always focused on the issue of vaccines… that and his weird-as-shit behavior. Beyond his issues with vaccines, he’s a strong proponent of a food as medicine approach to better health. It’s hard to argue with that unless you’re part of big agriculture, the factory food industry as well as big pharma. Michelle Obama was pushing this food as medicine approach and Republicans crucified her for it. But now there’s a whole Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Caucus in the Senate crewed by Republicans. Good on them. I wish them well in this endeavor along with RFK Jr. All those Democratic lawmakers who applauded Michelle Obama’s White House garden and healthy school lunches should jump on this.
TTG
https://stateline.org/2025/02/12/state-lawmakers-embrace-rfk-jr-s-health-policies/
Unfortunately, I doubt RFK Jr. presence will make any difference. This administration is hell bent on dismantling all regulation, including environmental, food and drug ones that you would presume RFK Jr. would be championing.
They already rescinded proposed limits on forever chemicals in water and they are looking at further weakening environmental protections. They ordered that FDA and food safety agencies must remove 10 regulations/guidelines for each new one they issue. And this for food industry which already has a poor record of adhering to regulations, leading to numerous salmonella and listeria outbreaks over the last ten years.
I expect any new laws to include massive carveouts and loopholes to make them completely ineffective. I also expect dismantling of enforcement, so that even if meaningful laws are passed, their practical effect would be null due to lack of enforcement. So yeah, very pessimistic on the whole MAHA agenda.
voislav,
I agree with your assessment. There will be a major fault line developing between the healthy eating faction and the let industry poison us for profit faction. Maybe Trump will end up firing RFK Jr if he starts making too much noise.
Voislav,
Who exactly is “they”?
No one in the Trump admin and none of his supporters want dangerous chemicals in their water. That is ridiculous.
Trump administration, more specifically Nancy Beck, who was at EPA under the previous Trump admin and is now returning to the same position. So you statement is definitely false, while I am sure his supporters don’t want PFAS’s in the water, there are plenty of people in the Trump administration coming from chemical industry who don’t want government imposing regulations on them.
https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-did-trump-overturn-ban-forever-chemicals-drinking-water-2022344
voislav,
Getting rid of unnecessarily burdensome and useless regulations and polluting the water are two different things. You are falsely assuming a stronger connection than really exists.
voisalav,
How much PFAS do they want the government to purposely add to the water. How’s East Palestine doing BTW?
County in Texas reported 10 measles cases last week. This week up to 48 now.
al,
Close the border. Send them all back. Cheerio.
Lots of new HIV cases too, from all the Haitians allowed here. Even some leprosy. Illegal immigration is a boon for big pharma.
Zika mysteriously disappeared a couple years ago.
Fred –
Gaines County in West Texas is 60% Anglo and a long way from the border.
Zika is gone thanks to the WHO.
leith,
That’s 300 miles to the border, 4 hours. Real farm when you need lots of bathroom breaks or have to charge your cybertruck.
WHO did what in South Florida? Or didn’t you get the Zika fear mongering out in Oregon?
Fred,
Zika is spread by mosquito bites, not immigrants. Florida, Texas and large swaths of the southern US can now support the mosquito species that can carry zika. The border wall is not going to stop climate change.
TTG,
Climate change!? I thought all that was Verboten!
TTG,
Zika must be one of those spontaneously formed type of life that just appeared here from nowhere. it would never be spread because someone who had zika came here, got bit by a mosquito, and said
mosquito then bit someone else who didn’t have zika.
TTG,
When I showed up in Warsaw in 1997 everyone under 40 was skinny. Everyone. When I went back 15 years later for my friends wedding the 14 year old girls were fatter than their moms.
I think it is all about the food.
Perhaps I should have been more clear. In 1997 nobody in Warsaw ate fast food and more importantly nobody ate processed foods – everything was made from scratch using ingredients you would have found in your grandmother’s kitchen.
Livestock was raised using 1920s technology – no hormones or antibiotics or the like.
James,
Around 30% of healthcare expenditures in the US are directly due to obesity. Everything from diabetes, to cardiovascular conditions, to failed kidneys to joints needing to be replaced due to carrying excessive weight.
Everyone gripes about the cost of healthcare and insurance, but they won’t do anything to make themselves healthy.
I think you are on to something important. The overweight problem has grown substantially during my lifetime, more in the US than in my native Sweden. But even there you can see the problem now. I just don’t know how the government will be able to do anything. Big Food has a lot of pull. When I was in the trucking business, I once picked up a load of cereal cartons. They were so urgently needed that I got state trooper escort and driving as fast as my truck could go through three states. I thought that was impressive to do that on such short notice.
Lars,
It’s a cultural thing to a large extent. What can the government do? Teach children in schools the value of healthy diet and exercise; far more important that transvestite story hour. Subsidize healthy meals in schools. Limit what food stamps can buy to healthy choices. More people have been killed by high fructose corn syrup than cigarettes, but tobacco was sued and taxed. Apply the same logic to corn syrup and other demonstrably unhealthy food products.
But mostly education and social pressure. Take the same massive propaganda machine that has convinced so many that American traditions are evil and transgender and illegal aliens are good and get it working on promoting good health instead.
Eric Newhill,
None of those ideas are bad, but they’re so woke.
TTG,
Good one. When your cult loses, just deny reality. Or better yet, create a brand new one in your head.
My definition of woke is exactly as it is applied everywhere, but especially in the education system, media and among funded activist groups. Everyone knows that.
Good health/healthcare isn’t a “progressive value”. What conservative isn’t for good health?
If you want to equate socialized medicine with good healthcare, then, yes, the “woke” are for anything socialist and are chock full of false understanding about the economics and efficacy, from a health outcomes perspective, of that kind of system + believe and spread outright lies. Anyhow, it is a false equivalence.
Btw, Here is another trans school shooter to add to Fred’s extensive list. https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2025/02/16/transgender-student-under-arrest-for-allegedly-planning-parkland-style-school-shooting/
Eric Newhill,
Your definition comes straight out of the MAGA propaganda machine. Listen to enough of that stuff and one would think half the kids are either transgender or want to be transgender. In reality only .6% of adults and 1.4% of kids 13 to 17 identify as transgender. That’s identify as transgender, not those who’ve made the physical transition.
Fred’s extensive list of trans school shooters contains only one, the 28 year old female who identified as a male who shot up the Catholic School in Nashville. The people she worked with didn’t even know she identified as transexual. The rest of Fred’s list were falshoods put out by the MAGA propaganda machine. Your potential parrkland style shooter makes it two.
TTG,
No. Woke is about promoting racism; i.e. how white people, capitalism and western civ are evil oppressors + the bizarre and depraved fascination with perversion and mental health issues as worthy of normalization and heroic.
My idea is to lead the sheep toward good health.
Eric Newhill,
You have a warped definition of what woke entails. Being woke is being “aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice).” It’s often used as an umbrella term for progressive values. And health care, even your worthy ideas for health care are progressive values.
Woke is defined by the DeSantis administration as “the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them.” That’s pretty much in line with the Merriam-Webster Dictionary definition as “someone [who] is informed, educated and conscious of social injustice and racial inequality.”
Taking the subject away to the developing crisis in Dept of “Justice”. Seven DOJ prosecutors have now resigned over the Mayor Adams’ corruption. One of which is Haggen Scotten:
Mr. Scotten served three combat tours in Iraq as a U.S. Army Special Forces Officer and earned two Bronze Stars. He graduated from Harvard Law School and clerked for Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. of the U.S. Supreme Court, and for Brett M. Kavanaugh before he, too, became an Supreme Court justice.
Mr Scotten in his resignation later to Trump’s Acting Asst Attor Gen stated in part:
“I have received correspondence indicating that I refused your order to move to dismiss the indictment against Eric Adams without prejudice, subject to certain conditions, including the express possibility of reinstatement of the indictment. That is not exactly correct. The U.S. Attorney, Danielle R. Sassoon, never asked me to file such a motion, and I therefore never had an opportunity to refuse. …I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion [to dismiss the Mayor Adams case]. But it was never going to be me….”
Two other DOJ prosecutors have been put on leave.
Sassoon is a conservative lawyer and member of the Federalist Society. Trump has fired a shot that he will soon regret, since a lot of DA’s and judges are paying attention. A few Republican Senators may even wake up from their stupor. This is how the downfall of Nixon started.
Interesting that 2 of those reassigning clerked for Justices Scalia, Roberts, Kavanaugh. Those relationships are not flimsy in the conservative community.
“The confirmation of RFK Jr has always focused on the issue of vaccines .. ”
Oh. Horse … biscuits TTG.
Well. Maybe his “confirmation” was vaccination based but that was never the reflection of the reality of the guy’s focus. Problem with ‘our medias’ reporting is the USA these days only gets “snippets” – and those snippets intended to support/disabuse narratives – depending wherever one’s “feelings” came down on whichever of the “vaccines” anyone is/was convinced to place faith in.
For some, Dissenters need not apply! Others may’ve not taken the shot at all. And in spite of each other’s “convictions” members of both dissenters and agree-ers alike, managed to somehow survive.
I didn’t contribute to Trump [this go-round] but I did contribute to RFK’s campaign. And I did get a ballcap and wear it in public. Problem nowadays is that *media tends to convey as that old canard “Damn! The Covington Kids!” generates a media generated hysteria which prompts Sam Clemens’ observance
‘A falsehood can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on’
But nobody much expends whatever to find stuff that doesn’t agree with what they’ve already placed Faith in. In other words, I’ve observed that people are generally enthusiastic about their predispositions. Give Me That Old Time Religion! playing over and over.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt28103777/
JK/AR,
Did you skip the part where I said “he’s a strong proponent of a food as medicine approach to better health”? That’s the whole point of the MAHA Caucus supporting RFK Jr.
No TTG, I didn’t,
Thing is, seems to me is that alot of the stuff RFK Jrs presented as is simplified into being a ‘boogy monster’ (and hell TTG, “my” Representative is Top Dawg on the House Agri Cmte)
Heck too, I say “Cancel the ethanol subsidies!” Food prices’d likely go down if corn is diverted from vehicles to bellies – but what do I know except to say, “No Congress! Not another congressional study group – which takes a decade to reach no productive results.”
Just atwix’t you TTG and myself I’m thinking you an’ me agrees more’n we don’t. Fr’Instance : check yer boxes
https://rumble.com/v6kubjp-gabbard-and-rfk-jr.-confirmed-jfk-task-force-launched.html
(Robert Barnes was the fellow sued CNN & et al back when ‘The Covington Kids” were still available for ridicule.)
Why is the nation spending so much on healthcare?
No doubt many reasons, but here are one man’s suggestions.
https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2025/02/12/what-working-at-a-retirement-home-taught-me-about-the-elderly-and-todays-healthcare-racket/
A partial outline:
“The first thing I’ve learned is just how naively trusting the elderly are of their doctors.
They really do view them as their ‘savior,’ almost godlike in a sense.
To think their primary care physician may have ulterior motives other than the improvement of their personal health would come as a shock to a good many of them.
…
The second thing I’ve learned is that almost every resident is on a plethora of pharmaceutical drugs.
One elderly gentleman proudly told me that’s he on fifteen separate medications each day, including four different blood pressure pills!
Another woman told me that her doctor prescribed her nineteen separate pills that’s she’s required to take with her breakfast each morning.
To many of these elderly folks, swallowing large numbers of pills each day is seen as perfectly normal which is a clear indicator of just how insane things have become in the Healthcare world.”
How closely do the observations of this one man mirror the big picture?
I do not know, but present this for consideration.
Eric, do you have an opinion on these matters?
Keith,
Pharmaceuticals are, indeed, over prescribed, in my opinion, to the point of doing harm too frequently. A lot of new Rx doesn’t provide marginal value anything near the marginal increase in cost over previously existing formulas. However, Rx isn’t really a driver of excessive healthcare spending in the US. It receives a lot of attention, but in reality is a small piece of the overall pie.
Excessive US healthcare costs are driven by the following (in no particular order):
1. High wages for care provider staff (everyone from the doctors and nurses to the hospital administrators to the janitors).
2. The impulse to employ the latest and greatest tech everywhere possible – all those machines that go “beep” in hospital rooms, the super duper computer guided imaging machines (CAT, PET and so on), the wirelessly controlled air glide bed, etc, etc, etc, etc.
3. The impulse to utilize the wiz bang tech as much as possible so as to bill either insurance or the patient for its utilization
4. Lack of standards of practice and practice protocols among doctors, which leads to inefficiency and waste
5. Actual fraud and abuse by doctors, hospitals and criminal gangs
6. New technology (= Rx, surgical capabilities, etc, etc) that allows each person in the US to be treated for more conditions. Conditions that you once just to had to live with and/or that killed you sooner or later, can now be treated because someone invented a way to do it. More people treated for more conditions each = higher expenditures.
7. Lack of health of Americans (obesity, lack of exercise, drug and alcohol abuse)
8. Heavy emphasis on maximum end of life care as opposed to hospice/dignified transition
The socialized systems have done much better at limiting each of the above, sometimes to the point of going too far in the opposite direction and over limiting access to care. Socialized systems are increasingly relying on private insurance supplementation. For example, 50% of Australian healthcare costs are paid by private insurance.
Btw – the insurance company profits are not a cost driver, being around 3% of revenues and 85% to 90% the rest paid claims, with the remainder going to operations, care management programs, etc., (which is cheaper than US government admin costs).
The good news is Trump has decided to lead by example. He has announced he is done with Big Macs. The president is notorious for eating multiple Big Macs and drinking up to 12 Diet Cokes a day. To get behind RFK and MAHA Trump has announced he will no longer eat Big Macs, drink Diet Coke and will lose 75 pounds. Because of the toxic chemicals in his spray on tan responsible for turning him orange, he has announced he will no longer spray tan and instead will get his tan by talking daily walks. Same with the hair spay he uses to keep his comb over in place. He will seek an organic alternative for that as well, or might just decide to do away with the comb over in a nod to the “bald is beautiful” movement.
Stafan,
He’s banning Fake News from the White House too. I hear AP is really upset by that.
RFK is about to find himself amidst real scientists who know how to argue the facts. Whole buildings filled with those critters. It’ll be a vastly different environment from that of doing one’s own research with Google.
There is hope. We should find out shortly.
The research is being shut down and the scientists laid off. RFK and his type know what they know and are not interested in any dissenting opinions. Does the Trump administration, or anyone he has brought along with him, look like the type to accept and factor in a large range of opinions, ideas, and then use reason and logic to come to a conclusion and even change long held, strongly held beliefs, because the science and facts say so?
Stefan,
True, but every batch of people has variations within it. There are indications RFK really cares about these issues and reality has a way of catching up to folks. If RFK doesn’t make the mistake of saying something bad about Big Macs or fake tanning products he just may be allowed to do his own thinking.
Mark Logan,
It looks like Fauci is also heading toward a face off with real scientists who know how to argue the facts. Whole buildings filled with those critters. It’ll be a vastly different environment from working behind closed doors with the Chinese Communist Party, Bill Gates and Rx companies and using US taxpayer money for which one isn’t accountable.
I think it’s 19 states are going after him, maybe up to 21 now, for his covid dictator nonsense.
Eric,
We are in agreement that it’s nonsense.
Booby Brainworm wants to send the 8 million Americans on antidepressants to “wellness farms” and force them to grow their own food.
https://bsky.app/profile/dankaszeta.bsky.social/post/3li6jwyrfbc2g
Bobby, not booby. More reverse dyslexia maybe? Or more likely it’s that “auto-pain-in-the-ass-correction-software feature that should be ripped from code everywhere.
Although ‘booby’ also applies.