OPINION:
An underreported aspect of President-elect Donald Trump’s victory last Tuesday night was how his historic alliance with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will shift our health care landscape.
Many Kennedy supporters pushed aside their hesitation about Mr. Trump to form the Make America Great Again and Make America Healthy Again alliance.
This alliance is poised to change things significantly in the nation’s health care industry.
In a recent interview, Mr. Trump said that Mr. Kennedy wanted to reform a host of issues relating to Big Pharma’s stranglehold on the sector and that he would allow the public health advocate to do “anything he wants.”
What can we expect Mr. Kennedy to get done?
First, he will likely order the Food and Drug Administration to pull the COVID-19 vaccines off the market and move to repeal the 1986 Vaccine Injury Compensation Act. A Trump transition team member has already stated that Mr. Kennedy is working on this and Mr. Trump has already expressed openness to the idea.
Mr. Kennedy is also expected to stop the FDA and other government regulatory bodies from continuing to shield the major drug companies from competition. We know this because he said it himself last week.
Mr. Kennedy stated on the social platform X that the 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.”
Conservatives, including Mr. Trump, have previously expressed similar concerns about how government health agencies block Big Pharma’s competition from gaining traction in the market.
The public has every reason to take Mr. Kennedy at his word when he says, “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.”
Next, Americans can expect Mr. Kennedy to add a federal firewall that mitigates Big Pharma’s ability to fund the drug approval process, compromising regulators’ ability to act independently.
Mr. Kennedy has said that he takes issue with how under programs including the Prescription Drug User Fee Act, drugmakers can directly fund the FDA to expedite drug reviews, creating a dangerous dependency that puts speed above safety. Mr. Kennedy has pointed out that while at the National Institutes of Health, even Dr. Anthony Fauci received royalty payments from the industry, many of which were never disclosed.
With drugmaker dollars lining these regulatory agencies’ pockets, it’s no wonder the public is questioning whose interests the FDA truly serves.
For these reasons, Mr. Kennedy is likely to push to scrap the Prescription Drug User Fee Act. As a secondary means of locking the revolving door between government regulators and the pharmaceutical industry, he could even consider imposing a stricter lobbying ban for government health workers.
As president, Mr. Trump flirted with an executive order that banned executive branch officials from lobbying the government for two years and the agencies in which they served for five years.
Time will tell whether Mr. Kennedy seeks to restore or increase those numbers for federal health workers. His past rhetoric indicates that he is motivated to end this lobbying revolving door, and Mr. Trump is always looking for ways to expound upon his “drain the swamp” agenda.
Last but not least, Mr. Kennedy will, without question, stop the price-gouging regulations that the Biden-Harris administration is pushing.
The pharmaceutical industry employs hundreds of lobbyists and is a generous benefactor to the political campaigns of candidates from both parties up and down the ballot. When they want something, they usually get it.
President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris pretended to be anti-pharma but have taken over $10 million combined from the drugmakers. So it’s little wonder that, on the campaign trail, Ms. Harris touted regulations on pharmacy benefit managers, the groups that health insurers hire to stop price gouging.
Killing PBMs is drugmakers’ top lobbying issue, so it is a top issue for Ms. Harris. It won’t be for Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Trump. They will have no interest in regulating businesses that have, for starters, cut Medicaid Part D spending by 20%.
This Kennedy-Trump health care alliance couldn’t have come at a better time. As a nation, we are getting sicker. Cases of diabetes and heart disease continue to climb while drug prices soar, and new treatments remain elusive for many Americans. And drugmakers’ profits not from cures but from the continuation of illnesses.
Mr. Trump and Mr. Kennedy have the opportunity to dismantle the corporate power structure that dominates our health care system. By balancing market forces and patient needs, they can create the most ambitious health care transformation in modern U.S. history.
Gone may finally be the days of an industry woven so deeply into regulatory bodies that the distinction between guardian and beneficiary is blurred. We all stand to benefit.
• Dr. Peter A. McCullough (@P_McCulloughMD) is a physician, health care speaker and advocate who serves as president of the McCullough Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to health and geopolitical policy concerning medical freedom, civil rights and injustices resulting from government and biopharmaceutical complex campaigns.
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