Outrage of the Month: President-Elect Trump’s Nominees for HHS and CMS
Health Letter, December 2024
By Robert Steinbrook, M.D.
Director, Public Citizen's Health Research Group
If you’re not outraged,
you’re not paying attention!
Read what Public Citizen has to say about the biggest blunders and outrageous offenses in the world of public health, published monthly in Health Letter.
If President-elect Trump’s first two health appointments are a preview of coming attractions, the prognosis for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and its operating divisions is not good.
In mid-November Trump nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be the Secretary of HHS. Kennedy is a conspiracy theorist with dangerous views on vaccines and many other topics. Kennedy, as Public Citizen said in a statement, “is a clear and present danger to the nation’s health. He shouldn’t be allowed in the building at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), let alone be placed in charge of the nation’s public health agency.”
Kennedy’s views are all over the place, a seemingly random mixture of some good ideas and deeply troubling conspiracy theories and false claims. Importantly, Kennedy has an exceptionally distorted view of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and its work. His October 25 post on X is breathtaking:
FDA’s war on public health is about to end. This includes its aggressive suppression of psychedelics, peptides, stem cells, raw milk, hyperbaric therapies, chelating compounds, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, vitamins, clean foods, sunshine, exercise, nutraceuticals and anything else that advances human health and can’t be patented by Pharma. If you work for the FDA and are part of this corrupt system, I have two messages for you: 1. Preserve your records, and 2: Pack your bags.
Although Public Citizen’s Health Research Group is often critical of the FDA and its decisions, our criticisms are in the context of advocating for a stronger and more effective agency that is independent of the industries it regulates. The FDA should approve the drugs and other medical products that are good and reject those that have minimal to no effectiveness or that pose unacceptable safety risks. There is no FDA war on public health.
Later in November Trump nominated Dr. Mehmet Oz, a cardiothoracic surgeon, television personality and unsuccessful 2022 Republican U.S. Senate candidate in Pennsylvania, to be the Administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Public Citizen’s statement about Oz said that he appeared to have become a “health care huckster…having spent much of his recent career hawking products of dubious medical value.” Oz’s background does not qualify him to run a complex federal agency that provides health care for about half of the U.S. population. Oz has called for further privatization of Medicare and promoted health misinformation about sham diet pills, unproven supplements, and hydroxychloroquine, an ineffective COVID-19 treatment.
Until the 119th Congress takes office in January 2025, it won’t be known which of Trump’s health nominees will be confirmed. Although Kennedy and Oz are the wrong people to lead HHS and CMS, respectively, the unfortunate reality is that both may be confirmed.