Monday brought back-to-back bad news from Robert F. Kennedy Jr., what with the Health and Human Services secretary helming a possible plan to ban the COVID vaccine and the mercurial, jeans-loving, worm-brained mess of a man getting authority over who gets kicked off of Medicare.
Y I K E S.
The Daily Beast is reporting that Kennedy and President Donald Trump are cooking up a plan to MAHA, or Make America Healthy Again, by banning the COVID-19 vaccine. Yes, ban. Not just refuse to authorize it for certain subgroups, such as children—he did that a while ago. Nor is it a defunding of a certain type of drug technology, which Kennedy has already done. This one is the whole kit and caboodle.
Kennedy, an anti-vaccine conspiracist who has as much medical training as a pet rock, has been pushing a 2022 study showing serious adverse effects from taking mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. Sure, that study was largely discredited for a host of reasons, including methodological flaws, biased data, and overlooking public health impacts. But that won’t stop Mr. MAHA.
Related | RFK Jr. is so mad that real doctors don’t have to listen to him
Not only will Kennedy Make Covid Great Again, his unhinged anti-vax views may result in manufacturers of other vaccines leaving the market too. One of Kennedy’s proposed strategies to force vaccine makers out of business is to decimate the federal vaccine injury compensation program, which is used to pay claims alleging an injury from a vaccine. That program provides a level of certainty and protection to drug manufacturers so that conspiracy nuts like Kennedy can’t bankrupt them with nonsense claims.
So, good luck to all of us in figuring out whether we can slip into Canada or Mexico or fly to Europe or whatever, just to get a booster shot.
Not content to oversee what will no doubt be waves of illness and death if—well, when, really—COVID takes hold again, Kennedy is also apparently set to wield decision-making authority over who gets kicked off of Medicare
Did we mention Kennedy’s distinct lack of medical training?
Nevertheless, he apparently gets to determine if someone is “medically frail” and therefore not subject to the new work requirement embedded in Trump’s beloved One Big Beautiful Bill. Hey, Kennedy’s got to be able to kick a lot of people off the Medicaid rolls to hit the planned $911 billion cut to the federally subsidized health insurance program. Mr. MAHA to the rescue!
Of course, most people on Medicaid do already work. A Congressional Budget Office study of one of the predecessors to the disastrous budget bill showed that this work requirement would indeed cut Medicaid spending but would not result in increased employment. For one thing, according to a recent study from KFF, almost 3 in 10 people on Medicaid were not working because of school attendance, illness or disability, or caregiving duties, which makes them exempt under previous policies.
The KFF study found that, while a relatively small portion of existing Medicaid enrollees would be affected, many more enrollees who would remain eligible would be at risk of losing coverage because of the administrative burden and red tape related to reporting requirements.
Stripping us of necessary medical interventions, forcing people with disabilities off of Medicaid: Kennedy is a one-man wrecking crew.