President Donald Trump’s effort to reset the focus of healthcare threatens to go off the rails before his Make America Healthy Again Commission even advances its first report.
The president sees MAHA as part of a larger project of making government agencies more accountable. Key efforts to eliminate waste and the seemingly endless bureaucracy that have come to define the swamp in Washington stand to help pave the way for new directions for combatting the growth of chronic disease throughout society.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was entrusted with the business of highlighting the systemic problems in the government’s response and fulfilling the White House’s calls to “restore the integrity of the scientific process by protecting expert recommendations from inappropriate influence and increasing transparency regarding existing data.”
It’s fair that Kennedy is questioning the status quo of government health functions and the plagues of waste and abuse. As he works to revise frameworks and rules in Washington, it is critical to remember that government must be constantly vigilant to the ways in which outside influences can steer policy decisions.
Kennedy often speaks of the need for radical transparency – embedded in the president’s Executive Order that established the MAHA Commission – to ensure a science gold standard that can support policy. But transparency has been in short supply from the Commission in the development of its new report that stands to be the basis of the restructuring of the federal government’s health policy frameworks.
While there has been an absence of public consultation or debate surrounding the Commission’s roadmap, we do know that Kennedy has closely involved two of his MAHA advisors and wellness entrepreneurs in the Commission’s work.
It’s not good enough to purge the federal bureaucracy and reform government while opening the door for crony influence from the other direction. The report is positioned to discard elements of widely accepted scientific research of the FDA and oppositely embrace an “emerging science” that happens to also confirm the MAHA advisor’s business models and ideologies. But don’t despair, these advisors have declared that the Commission’s report will “not get watered down by any conflicts of interest.” Like saying, “We are the government, and we are here to help.”
Republican lawmakers have asked some members of the Trump administration to remain cautious, worried that there is overextended influence by conspiracies that will harm the nation’s food security, as well as the economy. The front lines of the nation’s food supply also warn that disregard for sound science and evidence-based decisions will put the American public further at-risk.
Conservative voters have also expressed concerns about perspectives underlying health policy reform with more than half opposing changes that would result in higher prices at the grocery store. An even greater share (68%) says that transparency about foods to help make informed decisions is the key ideal over top-down mandates about what we can and cannot consume.
With growing scepticism around MAHA and further solidified public opinion on our nation’s foods, it is impossible to justify allowing the Commission strategies to be further shaped by the interests of MAHA campaigners.
The Commission has operated in the dark so far, and the glimpses that have emerged are concerning. As they forge a national strategy this summer, it’s imperative that the Commission relies on data-based reasoning, and the promised gold standard of science long-practiced by the FDA, rather than the pseudo-science generated to sustain a wellness industry.
