Six Former Surgeons Generals Say Kennedy Is A Danger To The U.S. Public

The following is part of an article in The Washington Post by Jerome Adams, Richard Carmona, Joycelyn Elders, Vivek Murthy, Antonia Novello, and David Satcher:

As former U.S. surgeons general appointed by every Republican and Democratic president since George H.W. Bush, we have collectively spent decades in service as the Nation’s Doctor. We took two sacred oaths in our lifetimes: first, as physicians who swore to care for our patients and, second, as public servants who committed to protecting the health of all Americans.

Today, in keeping with those oaths, we are compelled to speak with one voice to say that the actions of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are endangering the health of the nation. Never before have we issued a joint public warning like this. But the profound, immediate and unprecedented threat that Kennedy’s policies and positions pose to the nation’s health cannot be ignored.

Despite differences in perspectives, we have always been united in an unwavering commitment to science and evidence-based public health. It is that shared principle that led us to this moment.

Over recent months, we have watched with increasing alarm as the foundations of our nation’s public health system have been undermined. Science and expertise have taken a back seat to ideology and misinformation. Morale has plummeted in our health agencies, and talent is fleeing at a time when we face rising threats — from resurgent infectious diseases to worsening chronic illnesses.

Repairing this damage requires a leader who respects scientific integrity and transparency, listens to experts and can restore trust to the federal health apparatus. Instead, Kennedy has become a driving force behind this crisis.

HHS is the one of the largest civilian agencies in the federal government, with a nearly $2 trillion budget and oversight of programs and agencies that touch every American family and business: Medicare, Medicaid, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health and more. It requires steady, ethical leadership grounded in science.

By contrast, Kennedy has spent decades advancing dangerous and discredited claims about vaccines — most notoriously, the thoroughly discredited theory that childhood vaccines cause autism. He has promoted misinformation about the HPV vaccine, which protects against cervical cancer, and he has repeatedly misrepresented the risks of mRNA technology and coronavirus vaccines, despite their lifesaving impact during the pandemic.

This year, as the United States faced its worst measles outbreak in more than 30 years, Kennedy de-emphasized vaccination and directed agency resources toward unproven vitamin therapies. The result: months-long outbreak, three preventable deaths and the first measles-related child death in the U.S. in over two decades.

More recently, Kennedy removed every member of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, replacing its scientific experts with individuals who often lacked basic qualifications, some of whom are vaccine conspiracy theorists. The new committee has already begun casting doubt on the hepatitis B vaccine for newborns, despite decades of data affirming its effectiveness and strong safety profile.

Discrediting vaccines undermines one of the most important public health tools in American history. Thanks to widespread immunization, we eradicated smallpox, eliminated polio in the U.S. and prevented an estimated 1.1 million deaths and 508 million infections among children born between 1994 and 2023. Operation Warp Speed, initiated under President Donald Trump, brought lifesaving mRNA vaccines to the world in record time.

Yet Kennedy continues to ignore science and the public’s wishes. Most recently, HHS proposed new warning labels on products containing acetaminophen (Tylenol), citing a supposed link between prenatal use and autism. This move has been widely condemned by the scientific and medical communities, who have pointed out that the available research is inconclusive and insufficient to justify such a warning. In an extraordinary and unprecedented response, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and other leading health organizations issued public guidance urging physicians and patients to disregard HHS’s recommendation. Instead of helping pregnant women make informed decisions during a critical period in their lives, Kennedy’s decisions risk causing confusion, fear and harm. . . .

America’s public health systems are essential to the well-being of the nation. We are clear-eyed about the fact that these systems need to be improved, including paying more attention to areas such as disease prevention, mental health and chronic illness. But reform must be grounded in truth, transparency and scientific evidence. Without this foundation, we risk not only halting progress but reversing it — costing lives in the process.

Secretary Kennedy is entitled to his views. But he is not entitled to put people’s health at risk. He has rejected science, misled the public and compromised the health of Americans. The nation deserves a health and human services secretary who is committed to scientific integrity and can restore morale and trust in our public health agencies. Having served at senior levels in government, we know that politics are complicated. But this is bigger than politics. It’s about putting the health of Americans first.

Voters Are Not Happy With RFK,Jr As Head Of HHS

 

The charts above reflect the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between August 29th and September 2nd of a nationwide sample of 1,549 registered voters, with a 3 point margin of error.

Trump Is Giving His Middle Finger To America

From Robert Reich on the nomination of RFK, Jr to head the Department of Health and Human Services:

Nominating conspiracist and fabulist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to the nation’s leading health job — overseeing the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control, and the National Institutes of Health, among other sensitive positions — is an act of utter hubris. 

At a time when the truth is a precious common good, and the public’s health is already precarious, RFK Junior has made a name for himself spreading dangerous health lies.

He claimed that COVID-19 was “targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people” and that “the people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.” And that “the Chinese are spending hundreds of millions of dollars developing ethnic bioweapons and we are developing ethnic bioweapons. They’re collecting Russian DNA. They’re collecting Chinese DNA so we can target people by race.”

He has promoted the baseless claim linking vaccines to autism. He’s been a leading proponent of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation, erroneously suggesting the vaccine has killed more people than it has saved.

In his 2021 book, The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health, he alleged, without plausible evidence, that Dr. Fauci performed “genocidal experiments, sabotaged treatments for AIDS, and conspired with Bill Gates to suppress information about COVID-19.” 

All nonsense. 

Friends, I knew Robert F. Kennedy, and Robert F. Kennedy Junior is no Robert F. Kennedy. If not for his lustrous name, RFK Junior would be just another crackpot in the ever-growing pool of bottom-feeding fringe characters encircling Trump like ravenous slugs. 

So why nominate this collection of bozos?

 

If Trump wants to smoke out the Senate Republicans who aren’t fully behind him, he has easier ways of doing so than putting an entire Star Wars cantina of idiots up for Senate confirmation.

 

I can see why Trump might want total loyalists in key positions that would enable him to turn America into a police state — more on this tomorrow — but why nominate a nut job to run America’s health system?

 

What possible point is there to subjecting Americans to poisonous food or drugs? Why undermine the Centers for Disease Control when Americans and their children need the protections vaccines provide?

 

Or is all this just another manifestation of Trump becoming deranged?

HHS Department Recommends Marijuana Reclassification

This article is by Julie Tsirkin and Laura Strickler at NBC News.com:

The Department of Health and Human Services is formally recommending that the Drug Enforcement Administration ease government restrictions on marijuana, which remains illegal at the federal level even though 40 states allow its use in some form.

The move comes 11 months after President Joe Biden ordered the top health agency to conduct a review of the drug. The recommendation is to move marijuana from what’s known as a Schedule I drug to Schedule III, under the Controlled Substances Act.

In the eyes of the DEA, cannabis is in the same category as other Schedule I drugs like heroin and LSD, meaning it’s considered to have a high potential for abuse and no accepted medical use.

A spokesperson for HHS said it has “expeditiously” responded to the directive in providing its recommendation to the DEA on Tuesday.

If the DEA were to reschedule cannabis to Schedule III, it would most notably eliminate an IRS code intended to prevent drug dealers from claiming tax deductions for business expenses.

That alone could save the marijuana industry hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Small-business owners who spoke to NBC News said the inability to deduct what would otherwise be ordinary business expenses is their single biggest financial burden.

Now that HHS has made its recommendation, all eyes are on the DEA, which has the ultimate authority on scheduling substances.

The Biden administration had hoped to announce the rescheduling of the drug sometime in the fall, around the one-year mark of the president's request for the review, according to five sources familiar with planning. It's not yet clear how long the DEA’s public review process will take.

When reached for comment, a DEA spokesperson said: "We can confirm DEA received a letter from the Department of Health and Human Services providing its findings and recommendation on marijuana scheduling, pursuant to President Biden’s request for a review."

"DEA will now initiate its review,” the spokesperson added.

Asked about the recommendation during a news briefing Wednesday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the review “is an independent process” that is led by HHS and the Department of Justice, adding that she would not comment on where Biden currently stands on the issue of decriminalizing marijuana at the federal level.

Reaction to the HHS recommendation has been largely positive on Capitol Hill. In a statement, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer praised HHS as having done “the right thing” and urged the DEA to “quickly follow through on this important step to greatly reduce the harm caused by draconian marijuana laws.” Schumer, D-N.Y., said “there is much more that needs to be done legislatively to end the federal prohibition on cannabis and roll back the War on Drugs.”

Marijuana legalization advocates see this initial step as significant in and of itself: For the first time, the federal government is formally recognizing cannabis’ medical contributions.

The Cannabis Industry Association on Wednesday said that while the recommended reclassification would be historic, more should be done to align federal law with states where marijuana is legal. “The only way to fully resolve the myriad of issues stemming from the federal conflict with state law is to remove cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act and regulate the product in a manner similar to alcohol,” said CEO Aaron Smith in a statement.

Easing federal marijuana restrictions is also a political issue that both parties hope to capitalize on ahead of next year's presidential election, as polls have indicated a majority of Americans support legalization.

Some Republicans, including Florida Reps. Matt Gaetz, Greg Steube and Brian Mast have publicly called on the drug to be rescheduled and urged the Biden administration to prioritize the effort. But on the presidential campaign trail, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis doubled down this week on his opposition to marijuana decriminalization and legalization, despite voters in his state legalizing medical use of the drug last year. The Florida Supreme Court is now considering whether a cannabis legalization initiative will appear on the ballot in 2024. 

Separately, there is an ongoing bipartisan effort in Congress that would make it easier for financial institutions to offer banking services to legal cannabis companies.

Schumer has said that getting the legislation, known as the SAFE Banking Act, across the finish line will be a “top priority” when the Senate returns in September. But a looming government shutdown could complicate that effort, even as lawmakers behind the bill have worked to break an impasse over the August recess.

More Bad News For The GOP Regarding Obamacare

After their failure to keep the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) from becoming law, the congressional  Republicans told a whole stack of lies about it. Among that stack of lies was the claim that Obamacare would drive up health care costs -- both for health care insurance premiums, and for actual health care itself. We already know that insurance premiums are not rising as the GOP predicted. They are going down in some states, and rising slower than in the past in other states -- thanks to Obamacare.

Now we have evidence that shows Obamacare may well be working as hoped to keep medical care costs down, instead of driving up costs as the GOP claimed would happen. The chart above was made with information from the Department of Health and Human Services (Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation). Their recent report shows that the uncompensated care costs (UCC) incurred by hospitals is slated to drop by about $5.7 billion this year in all states, and the reason for the drop in UCC is due to more people having health insurance due to Obamacare.

The biggest reason for this drop in uncompensated costs is due to more people being covered by Medicaid. Hospitals used to have to eat the cost of treating these people in their emergency rooms (and sometimes in their care units). These costs would normally be passed on to other patients in the form of higher overall hospital charges -- which would drive up the co-pay of patients and the costs paid by insurance companies (which would drive up the premium price to customers).

That's what would happen in private hospitals. In public hospitals, the prices would also rise to help pay for the hospital's UCC, but part of the UCC would also be paid for through higher city, county, or regional taxes. That means Obamacare is not only helping to keep hospital costs down, but also helping to keep the tax burden from rising.

We know that most of the reduction in hospital UCC is due to expansion of Medicaid, because 74% of the reduction in UCC has happened in states that have expanded Medicaid. But costs in states that did not expand Medicaid also went down (about 26% of the reduction in hospital UCC happened in these states) -- and that was also due to Obamacare.

It comes form people who could not afford insurance before Obamacare. Since they didn't have insurance, a large medical bill would bankrupt these people and cause the hospital to have to eat the cost of their care. These people made too much to qualify for Medicaid under Obamacare, but the new law gave them a subsidy to help them buy insurance -- and since they now have health insurance, the hospitals are getting paid for the medical care they provide to these people.

Once again, the Republicans are exposed as being liars about Obamacare. Obamacare has helped hospitals to keep their costs for patients down by making sure they get paid for a higher percentage of those patients. And while the hospitals located in states that have expanded Medicaid are seeing the biggest drop in uncompensated care costs, Obamacare has also reduced those costs in other states.

I still believe we should institute a government-run single-payer health insurance system. It would be more effective in both covering everyone and keeping medical costs down. But it is now an undisputed fact that Obamacare has been a huge improvement over what we had before it was passed.

Obamacare Private Insurance Purchases Top 5 Million

The nightmare continues for right-wing Republicans.

When the state and federal exchanges of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) opened last October, the computer system had some serious glitches. The Republicans were overjoyed. They had predicted the program would be a failure, and were encouraging people to not sign up for insurance under the program. And two months after the Obamacare exchanges started, it looked like the Republicans may have been right -- with there only being 365,000 private insurance purchases by the end of November (disappointing numbers by any standard).

But then the glitches in the computer system were fixed, and the private insurance purchases began to quickly grow. By the end of December more than 2 million people had purchased insurance through Obamacare, and by the end of February that number had doubled to more than 4 million. Now, only a couple of weeks into March, the number of private insurance purchases have topped 5 million.

The Obama administration had hoped to have 6 million sign-ups by the end of this month (and another million after March in this first year). Can they reach those goals? It looks like they might. Note that there have been nearly 800,000 sign-ups in the first couple of weeks of March. If they just maintain that kind of growth in the next couple of weeks, they will finish March very close to 6 million -- and it is more likely that the growth will instead accelerate since the initial sign-up period ends at the end of March.

I think the 6 million goal is doable, since people are running out of time to purchase insurance and avoid paying a tax penalty for having no insurance. It simply makes no sense to pay a tax penalty and still have nothing to show for it (no insurance coverage), and because of that, there will be a huge number of last minute sign-ups.

Of course this is a nightmare for right-wing Republicans. The larger the number of people covered with insurance through Obamacare, the less likely the program could ever be repealed without serious political consequences. And I'm not just talking about the people who have purchased private insurance policies. At the end of February, if you add in the number of people qualifying for Medicaid, the figure of people getting insurance through Obamacare was over 8.6 million people. I suspect that number is now probably approaching (or has reached) 10 million people.

More Than 8.6 Million Americans Have Now Gotten Health Insurance Through Obamacare

The Republicans in the House of Representatives have tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) 50 times now -- and they have failed 50 times. This week they are trying to do something different. They have introduced bills that would make three minor changes to Obamacare -- "fixes" that are not opposed by the Democrats and would improve the program. Why the radical change? In the past, Republicans have said Obamacare was so bad that it couldn't be "fixed". Now they are proposing to "fix" it.

The reason is that their worst nightmare is coming true -- Obamacare is signing up millions of Americans, and while the program is far from perfect, it now looks like it is going to be a success. At least 8.6 million Americans have now qualified for health insurance through Obamacare (4.242 million buying private insurance and 4.378 million qualifying for Medicaid or CHIPS), and the numbers continue to grow.

Repealing Obamacare is simply no longer political viable (regardless of what their teabagger base thinks) -- and continuing their efforts to repeal it could put their control of the House in danger (since the Democrats only need to win 17 seats to flip the House). The best they can realistically do now, especially for those in competitive districts, is to tell the voters they voted to "fix" Obamacare.

The charts above (and below) are from information just released by the Department of Health and Human Services. You can go to their website for more statistics, including numbers from the individual states.

NOTE -- Here are the ten states with the highest number of people who have purchased private insurance through Obamacare:

1. California...............868,936
2. Florida...............442,087
3. Texas...............295,025
4. New York...............244,618
5. North Carolina...............200,546
6. Pennsylvania...............159,821
7. Michigan...............144,587
8. Georgia...............139,371
9. Illinois...............113,733
10. Washington...............107,262

Obamacare Is Here To Stay (And The GOP Knows It)

The Republican Party had said they would be voting again to repeal the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) this coming week, and this time they would be passing their own version of health care reform. But that's now not going to happen.

The Republicans have been saying for years now that they will produce a better health care reform plan -- and for years they have been unable to do that. They have been unable to do it because whatever proposal a Republican comes up with, there are a majority of Republicans against it. And the same thing happened to their plan for this week. They were unable to get enough Republicans to support any reform plan at all to get it passed.

While their opposition to Obamacare is nearly universal with their elected officials, they simply cannot come up with any other cure for our broken health care system (except to cut taxes for the insurance companies and other corporations, which is their "cure" for every problem the nation faces). So, instead of voting to repeal Obamacare and replace it with a GOP reform plan this week, they are going to just propose and vote on a one-year delay of Obamacare's individual mandate.

Even if this proposal passes both houses and becomes law (which it won't), this is nothing short of a surrender to reality -- the reality that Obamacare is here to stay (and there's nothing they can do about it). And it's not just their inability to come up with an alternative that makes them realize this (even if they won't admit it).

They can see the numbers of people who have purchased private insurance under Obamacare -- numbers that are significant, and continue to grow. And they know it is simply not politically viable to deny these millions of people the cheaper and better insurance Obamacare is providing them. The Department of Health and Human Services is reporting that the number of people who have purchased private insurance under Obamacare has now topped 4 million (and that doesn't count the millions more who have now qualified for Medicaid).

I'm sure the Republicans will continue to mouth their proposals to repeal Obamacare during their primary season, because that's what their teabagger base wants to hear. But they know the fight is over. Obamacare is here to stay. Now we need to start a dialogue on how to improve Obamacare.

A Few More Steps Toward Equality

(The image above is from the website Solid Rarity: realities of living the revolution.)

The United States Constitution guarantees all citizens equal treatment under the law. Sadly, this country has never been able to live up to that promise. Progress has been made in granting equality to minorities, women, and more recently to the LGBT community. None of these groups truly have equality yet, but we are getting closer to making it a reality all the time. This week more small, but important, steps were taken toward that goal -- this time in the area of equal rights for those in same-sex marriages.

The first is in the area of taxes. Even though same-sex marriage is legal in a growing number of states, these marriages have not been treated equally by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). These same-sex married couples have never been allowed to file their taxes as a married couple, and thus were denied the tax advantages that heterosexual married couple are able to get. That is changing.

The IRS announced last week that from now on same-sex and opposite-sex couples will be treated equally. Those couples in same-sex marriages (who were legally married in a state allowing such marriages) will now be able to file their taxes jointly as a married couple. And even better, they will be able to do that regardless of what state they currently live in. In other words, if they get married in a state where same-sex marriages are legal and then move to a state where those marriages are not legal, they will still be able to file their taxes as a married couple.

And the IRS is not the only government agency to take action to promote more equality. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has also done so. This week they announced that same-sex married couples will be treated just like opposite-sex married couples in regard to the nursing home care provided under Medicare. This means they will no longer have to be separated and sent to different nursing homes in their old-age (or pay their own way to stay in the same nursing home). Thank goodness for that. It is just morally wrong to force these elderly couples to separate just because they need nursing home care paid for by Medicare.

And a federal court has also taken action. Even though DOMA was outlawed and the military now grants same-sex couples the same benefits as opposite-sex couples, the same was not true for veterans. That's because Title 38 of the U.S. Code prevented it. But Judge Consuelo B. Marshall has overturned that provision, saying it was not rational -- and thus was unconstitutional. Now the same-sex spouses of veterans will be able to get the same benefits and services as other spouses of veterans.

The federal government inched a little bit closer to making equality a reality last week. That's a good thing. Now we need to finish the fight -- not just for the LGBT community, but for all citizens currently denied equal rights. Maybe someday soon, we can make that constitutional guarantee of equality a reality for all American citizens.