Trump’s health care picks could help carry out Kennedy overhaul

The team chosen by the president Donald Trump The man chosen to lead federal health agencies in his second administration includes a retired congressman, a surgeon and a former talk show host.

From health care to pharmaceuticals, from food safety to science research, all of these can play important roles in fulfilling political agendas that could transform how the government protects the health of Americans. He is the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, an environmental lawyer, and an anti-vaccine organizer. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Trump’s picks have no experience running large bureaucratic institutions, but I know how to talk about health on TV.

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Dr. Mehmet Oz She has been hosting a talk show for 13 years and is a well-known wellness and lifestyle influencer. The Food and Drug Administration’s pick, Dr. Marty Makary, and general surgeon Dr. Janette Nesheiwat is a frequent contributor to Fox News.

Many people on the list criticized COVID-19 precautions such as masking and booster shots for young people. Some, like many of Trump’s other cabinet nominees, have ties to Florida: Dave WeldonThe Centers for Disease Control and Prevention pick represented the state in Congress for 14 years and is affiliated with a medical group on the state’s Atlantic coast. Nesheiwat’s brother-in-law Representative Mike WaltzR-Fla., was appointed by Trump as national security adviser.

Here’s a look at the candidates’ potential role in carrying out what Kennedy said was the task of “reorganizing” institutions that have an overall budget of $1.7 billion, employ 80,000 scientists, researchers, doctors and other officials, and impact Americans’ daily lives:

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

The Atlanta-based CDC has a core budget of $9.2 billion and is charged with protecting Americans from disease outbreaks and other public health threats.

Kennedy has long attacked vaccines and criticized the CDC, repeatedly citing allegations of corruption at the agency. He said in a podcast in 2023 that “there is no safe and effective vaccine” and urged people to resist CDC guidelines on whether and when children should be vaccinated.

Decades ago Kennedy found common ground with him WeldonThe 71-year-old served in the military and practiced internal medicine before representing Florida’s central congressional district from 1995 to 2009.

Beginning in the early 2000s, Weldon played a prominent role in the debate over whether there was a relationship between a vaccine preservative called thimerosal and autism. He was a founding member of the Congressional Autism Caucus and sought to ban thimerosal from all vaccines. Kennedy, then senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, believed there was a link between thimerosal and autism and also accused the government of withholding documents showing the danger.

Since 2001, all vaccines manufactured for the U.S. market and routinely recommended for children 6 years of age and younger do not contain thimerosal or contain only trace amounts, except for the inactivated influenza vaccine. Meanwhile, study after study has found no evidence that thimerosal causes autism.

Weldon’s congressional voting records suggest he may join Republican efforts to shrink the CDC, including eliminating the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, which works on issues such as drownings, drug overdoses and gun deaths. Weldon also voted to ban federal funding for needle exchange programs as an approach to reducing overdoses, and the National Rifle Association gave him an “A” grade for his pro-gun rights voting record.

Food and Drug Administration

Kennedy is highly critical of the FDA, which has 18,000 employees and is responsible for the safety and effectiveness of prescription drugs, vaccines and other medical products, as well as inspecting cosmetics, e-cigarettes and most foods.

Makary, Trump’s pick to run the FDA, works closely with Kennedy. few topics. The professor, a Johns Hopkins University-trained surgeon and cancer specialist, decried the overprescription of drugs, the use of pesticides on food and the undue influence of pharmaceutical and insurance companies on doctors and government regulators.

Kennedy has claimed he would exonerate “all” of our FDA departments and recently threatened to fire FDA employees for “aggressively pushing” a number of unproven products and treatments, including stem cells. raw milk, psychedelics And Discredited COVID-era treatments such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.

Makary’s dissenting views during the COVID-19 pandemic included questioning the need for masking and giving Covid-19 vaccine boosters to young children.

But anything Makary and Kennedy might want to do could prove difficult when it comes to loosening FDA regulations or rescinding long-standing vaccine and drug approvals. The agency has lengthy requirements for removing drugs from the market, based on federal laws passed by Congress.

Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services

The agency provides health care to more than 160 million people through Medicaid, Medicare and the Affordable Care Act, and also sets Medicare payment rates for hospitals, doctors and other providers. With a $1.1 trillion budget and more than 6,000 employees, Oz has a massive agency to run if confirmed, and it’s one that Kennedy doesn’t talk much about in his plans.

Although Trump sought to repeal the Affordable Care Act in his first term, Kennedy has not yet sought to do so. But he criticized Medicaid and Medicare for covering expensive weight-loss drugs. neither widely covered.

Trump said during the campaign He said he would protect Medicare, which provides insurance to older Americans. Self Approves expansion of Medicare Advantage, a popular, privately run version of Medicare but also the source of widespread fraud – inside an AARP survey during his unsuccessful 2022 bid for a U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania and 2020 Forbes column With the former CEO of Kaiser Permanente.

Oz also said in the Washington Examiner: column Healthier aging and living longer could help close the U.S. budget deficit because people would work longer and contribute more to gross domestic product, he said with three co-authors.

Neither Trump nor Kennedy said much about Medicaid, the insurance program for low-income Americans. Trump’s first administration reshaped the program by allowing states to impose work requirements on recipients.

general surgeon

Kennedy doesn’t appear to have said much publicly about what he wants to see from his position as surgeon general, the nation’s top doctor and overseeing 6,000 U.S. Public Health Service members.

The surgeon general has little administrative authority, but he can be an effective government spokesman on what is considered a public health hazard and what to do about it; such as suggesting warning labels for products and making recommendations. Current general surgeon Vivek Murthy, Declares gun violence a public health crisis In June.

Nesheiwat, Trump’s pick, works as the New York City medical director for CityMD, a group of urgent care facilities in the New York and New Jersey area, and has been with City MD for 12 years. He has also appeared on Fox News and other TV shows, wrote a book on the “transformative power of prayer” during his medical career, and endorsed a vitamin supplement brand.

He has promoted COVID-19 vaccines during the pandemic, calling them “a gift from God” and antiviral pills like Paxlovid in a February 2021 Fox News column. In the 2019 Q&A section Women in Medicine Heritage FoundationNesheiwat said he is a “firm believer in preventive medicine” and “could write a dissertation on hand washing alone.”

National Institutes of Health

As of Saturday, Trump had not yet indicated his preference to lead the National Institutes of Health, which funds medical research through grants to researchers across the country and conducts its own research. It has a budget of 48 billion dollars.

Kennedy said he would pause drug development and infectious disease research to shift the focus to chronic diseases. He wants to block NIH from taking funding from researchers with conflicts of interest, and in 2017 he criticized the agency for not doing enough research on the role of vaccines in autism: an idea that has long been disproven.

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Associated Press writers Amanda Seitz and Matt Perrone and AP editor Erica Hunzinger contributed to this report.

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