AMERICA'S SICKNESS CARE SYSTEM

Robert Kennedy Jr. and our healthcare debate

Bobby Kennedy Jr. is all over the news this week, having been chosen by President-elect Trump to be his Secretary of Health and Human Services. In a week full of controversial appointments, the choice of Kennedy seems more than any other to have caused passionate argument. Some think he’s an anti-vax, worm-in-the-brain-addled, can-you-believe-he-left-that-bear-in-the-park nutcase, while others think he’s making important points about the high rate of chronic illness in America and the undue influence of the sickness-industrial-complex.

As you can see in the video above - taken from the first Democratic primary debate in 2020 (yeah, we had them that year) - I’ve been ringing the “We don’t have a healthcare system, we have a sickness care system!” bell for a long time. I mentioned in the debate that we have to ask why America has such a high rate of chronic illness compared to other countries, saying that in order to deal with that we’d have to look not only at Big Pharma but also at our chemical policies, environmental policies, food policies — and boy, check out how quickly Lester Holt got the camera off me at that point!

Whether it’s Kennedy or me or anyone else, such a conversation is verboten in a system where Big Food, Big Pharma, big chemical companies and so forth have such undue influence on our public policies.

And as we all know by now, anyone who goes there is a kook.

Don’t get me wrong. Vaccines are critically important and often life-saving; some of Kennedy’s past comments about them were definitely irresponsible. Infectious diseases are no joke, and his indirect connection to the measles outbreak in Samoa was deeply disturbing. He has uttered extreme opinions that have made any reasonable person, including myself, suspicious of his positions a times.

But I haven’t found one yet where his explanation, modification, or the evolution of his views has not quelled my suspicions. In fact, I’ve noticed how often it’s his accusers who will twist information, making something he said sound “crazy” when in fact in countries around the world the same point of view is considered anything but.

I don’t know whether we should take flouride out of the water, for instance, but it’s clear that Kennedy’s concerns about that are not baseless. Most Western European nations, including Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland, have stopped adding fluoride to their water systems, based on the same concerns that RJK Jr. has expressed here.

The day after Kennedy announced his endorsement of Trump, I said the Democratic Party should announce its own root cause food and health platform as an alternative. I knew the topic was important, and discussing the issue was one of the reasons I myself had run. I offered the food and whole health policies I had developed during my own campaign, suggesting they could be a jumping off point for a Harris response to Kennedy’s announcement. Their disinterest did not come as a surprise but it saddened me; it displayed a profound lack of understanding of people’s health care concerns and how proactively creating health is a much needed complement to merely treating the symptoms of disease.

We have carcinogens in our food supply not allowed in other advanced nations, for no other reason than that their ability to increase an item’s shelf-life - thus profit margin for the Big Food company that manufactured it - is placed before the safety, health and well-being of the consumer. There are chemicals in pesticides in this country that are known to harm a developing child’s brain. “Air toxics” released throughout American skies are known to be disease causing agents.

Why are we allowing this to happen??

For one reason, and one reason only: corporate greed and its undue financial influence on our government. So to those who argue that Bobby Kennedy is “crazy,” my response is that the system he questions is certifiably insane. If nothing else, he has opened up a mainstream conversation about our high chronic disease rate - plus its root causes - that we desperately need to be having. And for that I thank him.

People I deeply respect disagree with me on this one, and usually in our conversations I end up thinking that to some extent we’re both right. The system will play itself out, as it should. Kennedy may or may not be confirmed for the position at HHS, and even if he is, there will be checks and balances that act as guardrails should he go too far in any one direction. If he leads the country towards greater health, I will applaud him. If he says or does anything that seems to me reckless - which already happened when I tweeted “Noooo Bobby!” when he made some later-retracted asinine comment about vaccines and Ashkenazi Jews - I’ll be the first to yell “Foul.”

In the meantime, I consider the corporate capture of our healthcare agencies - an egregious wrong Kennedy so passionately decries - a far greater threat to our health and safety than are any of the views he purports to hold now.

I wish him well.