Our Public Health System Is Broken: RFK Jr. Has the Knowledge, Passion and Courage to Change It.

By Dick Russell, Special to The Kennedy Beacon

An earlier version of this story was published by the author on his substack, here.

Let me begin this analysis by saying I'm not unbiased on this issue. As a friend of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for more than twenty years, and recently his authorized biographer [Real RFK Jr.: Trials of a Truth Warrior], I closely followed his presidential campaign – and the ongoing attacks against him by the corporate-owned media.

Bobby isn’t “anti-vaccine,” nor is he a “conspiracy theorist,” two labels repetitively pinned on him when he isn’t being dismissed as a kook. The truth is, Big Pharma, Big Ag and the captured agencies that support their agendas are scared to death of what his policies portend – and they should be,

.I should add that I didn’t support RFK Jr’s decision to abandon his independent candidacy and join forces with Donald Trump, and I told him so. I found it hard to believe that Trump was sincere about giving him a position where he could take on the money-driven public health system. But I was wrong about that. President Trump has kept his promise, and I hope that soon Kennedy will be confirmed to run the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the country’s largest civilian agency with more than 83,000 employees and annual budget of $1.7 trillion in 2024 (including Medicare and Medicaid, our largest health insurers).

Kennedy’s confirmation hearing is scheduled for January 29, as reported in The Kennedy Beacon.

So, what should you know about the importance of Kennedy’s appointment? First, consider some very disturbing figures. Sixty percent of American adults have at least one chronic health condition. Nearly half the population has high blood pressure. Fifteen percent suffer from type-2 diabetes. According to the Centers for Disease Control, almost forty percent of American adults are considered obese, and so are one out of every five children. One out of three individuals are turned down for military service because of their weight. One in every thirty-six kids are diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, a drastic increase from one in 150 two decades ago, and the cause remains disputed and unknown.

Last year, the pharmaceutical industry distributed $31 billion worth of free samples to doctors. The same drug titans spent $4.7 billion between 1999 and 2018 on lobbying federal agencies and Congress. In 2024 alone, Big Pharma put out more than $5 billion on national TV ads, with their sales bringing in five times what they pay for commercials. Some of the peddled products are, of course, government-approved as effective and even life-saving, but the system is nonetheless ripe for corruption and in need of reform.

So is the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates 77 percent of America’s food supply and oversees the safety of almost $4 trillion of food, tobacco and medical products. The FDA receives 45 percent of its funding through “user fees” coming from pharma and medical device companies. Nine of the last ten FDA chiefs moved on to lucrative jobs in the pharmaceutical industry. Don’t these facts constitute a conflict of interest? Is it surprising that the FDA greenlights prescription drugs while often suppressing cheaper generic and natural alternatives? Should we be shocked that about one-third of citizens polled say they no longer trust our medical system?

Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” platform is not some pipe dream. Twenty years ago, he began shifting his attention from suing polluters to shaking the tree of an increasingly broken health care arena. It’s not made him popular among those who once lauded him as a champion of the environment, but his devotion to a better future for our younger generations remains paramount no matter the personal cost.

Overall, diet-related diseases are believed to be responsible for half of the deaths in the U.S. every year, and cost $383 billion to treat. One way that Kennedy wants to tackle this situation is where the federal government has leverage – with the school lunch and breakfast programs that our tax dollars pay for. Getting rid of ultra-processed foods such as sodas and packaged chips would be a starting point. Then there are products like fruit-flavored yogurt, fortified white bread and sweetened energy bars, additives that often exceed healthy limits on saturated fat, sodium and added sugars.

Amid a series of ongoing attacks on him, The New York Times did publish a guest opinion piece by a health care professional headlined, “What Kennedy Gets Right About American Health Care.” Its author, Rachael Bedard, wrote: “The nefarious influence of the pharmaceutical industry on health care is well established. There are many examples of drug makers funding advocacy groups and influencing regulators into approving ineffective or potentially harmful drugs, and then wining and dining doctors into prescribing those therapies to patients.”

What’s been fascinating to me as RFK Jr. ’s confirmation hearing approaches is the sudden spate of studies, policy changes, and new regulations that back up what Kennedy has been proposing.

It’s hard to say whether this is a belated, head-him-off-at-the-pass attempt to indicate that such things are already being addressed properly, but clearly Kennedy is waking up the consciousness if not the conscience of a nation. Look at the following recent events:

January 17: A Newsweek article reported that the Steak ‘n Shake chain of almost 500 restaurants will start cooking its fries in “100 percent beef tallow,” or animal fat, rather than vegetable oil. Kennedy had alleged in October that Americans are “being unknowingly poisoned by heavily subsidized seed oils” that fuel the obesity epidemic. He’d also pointed out that McDonald’s used beef tallow in their fries up until 1990, when they phased it out in favor of seed oils. (The American Heart Association has said there’s “no reason” to avoid them.)

January 15: The FDA banned the use of Red Dye No. 3 in food, beverages and drugs. The food coloring was outlawed from being used in cosmetics way back in 1960, after it was shown to be causing cancer in male laboratory rats. Food safety groups hailed the move as long overdue.

January 14: The FDA called for putting new nutrition labels for fat, sugar and salt on the front of food and beverage products, which the Times called, “a move aimed at changing eating habits associated with soaring rates of obesity and diet-related illness that are responsible for a million deaths each year.”

January 6: A federal analysis of numerous studies, published in JAMA Pediatrics, concluded that high exposure to fluoride in our water systems – long touted for reducing tooth decay – is linked to lower I.Q. scores in children. The New York Times conceded that “the report’s findings align in many ways” with Kennedy, who has recommended advising authorities to remove fluoride from drinking water.

January 6: A study published in Nature Medicine found that sugary drinks were tied to 2.2 million additional cases of Type 2 diabetes and 1.2 million cases of cardiovascular disease in 2020, especially where there’s been a sales increase in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa.

January 3: California Governor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order aimed at limiting the availability of ultra-processed foods and reducing purchases of candy and sodas in food stamp programs that are made with synthetic dyes or additives. “The food we eat shouldn’t make us sick with disease or lead to lifelong consequences,” Newsom said in a statement. The Los Angeles Times headlined its coverage “With order, governor appears to be staying ahead of any new federal food policies.”

A month earlier, Senator Bernie Sanders echoed Kennedy in a tweet: “For decades, the food and beverage industry has made massive profits by enticing children to consume unhealthy products purposely designed to be overeaten.”

Notably, Kennedy hasn’t shied from differing with Trump aide-de-camp Elon Musk. He’s an advocate of weight-loss drugs, which RFK thinks should be banned in favor of exercise and alternatives that don’t pose worrisome side effects. He and Musk are on the same page about stopping the drug companies from spending tens of billions on TV ads, which has only been happening since the FDA in 1997 relaxed rules that let those companies summarize possible side effects. As the Times reported on December 23, 2024, “Research has found that the majority of the top-advertised drugs offer little to no medical benefit compared to existing treatments. Many cost tens of thousands of dollars per year.”

Kennedy even lambasted his prospective boss’s dietary choices. After being observed eating McDonald’s with Trump on his private plane the previous weekend, Kennedy did a podcast interview on November 12 during which he stated: “The stuff that he eats is really, like, bad,” Apparently referencing his own experience, Kennedy added: “Campaign food is always bad, but the food that goes onto that airplane is, like, just poison….You’re either given KFC or Big Macs” if you’re lucky, with the other possible options being “kind of inedible.”

When I read these comments, I wondered whether the vainglorious president-elect would now back away from his avowed commitment to Kennedy. But Trump moved ahead two days later in tapping him to lead HHS, saying he’d let RFK Jr. “go wild on food.” It’s not been smooth sailing since. He would need to work closely with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), but has expressed his desire to “reverse 80 years of farm policy” by banning certain pesticides and ending the factory farming industry that he’d fought as an environmental lawyer. Crop engineering, Kennedy says, may have made our grains more resilient to drought and pests, but it’s also rendered them “nutrient barren.”

Make no mistake: the roadblocks Kennedy will face on January 29 are multi-pronged and formidable.

On January 15, former Vice President Mike Pence’s organization (Advancing American Freedom) called on senators to vote against him, because Kennedy had emphasized “a woman’s right to choose” and said during his presidential campaign that he’d support legislation to restore the protections in Roe v. Wade, which the Supreme Court overturned during Trump’s first term. Pence’s letter deemed Kennedy’s position “completely out of step with the strong pro-life record of the first Trump administration.”

But Kennedy’s passion and commitment to our national health is nearly unmatched. To learn more about Kennedy’s history as an environmental advocate who eventually turned to public health, please see my 2023 biography, available through this Amazon link. You can also read a summary and review here at The Kennedy Beacon. And Jeff Hays’ documentary, based on my book, is here.

Next week, when Kennedy sits before the Senate Finance Committee, I’ll be watching intently, as I hope all of you will be. Will there be defections from the Republican or Democratic side? What will ranking member Chuck Grassley, who represents the corn-growing state of Iowa, do? In an interview before the election, he opined that there are ways to “make America healthy again” without “upsetting the way we produce food.”

What will committee chairman, Mike Crapo, from Idaho do? He has expressed support for Kennedy’s "prioritized addressing chronic diseases through consumer choice and healthy lifestyle.”

The committee can give either a favorable or unfavorable recommendation, or none at all. Republicans have a voting edge of 14-to-13. Which means it’s likely to be favorable, although most Democrats are expected to oppose Kennedy in a united front. That will hold true in the full Senate, where after debate on the floor, Kennedy needs 50 votes out of 53 Republicans in order to make it through.

Kennedy as head of HHS would be a game changer for those of us who care about our own health, and the health of our children.

Dick Russell is the best-selling author of 16 books, on subjects ranging from the Kennedy assassination to the environment to biographies of James Hillman and RFK Jr. Readers interested in subscribing to his Substack can do so, here: