A former Obama administration official admitted Friday morning that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “does have some ideas” about chronic illness that are “worth pursuing” during a MSNBC panel discussion.
President-elect Donald Trump announced he would nominate Kennedy to be Secretary of Health and Human Services Thursday. Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, who is viewed as the architect of Obamacare, admitted that while he thought Kennedy was “unqualified,” his focus on chronic illness might benefit the country.
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“I should say he does have some ideas that are worth pursuing, such as focusing on chronic illness. 85 to 90 cents of every dollar we spend on health care goes to chronic illness,” Emanuel said. “We have to focus on them. They are our big problems, whether hypertension, cancer, debates, arthritis, and we have to get our arms around them and he is right to improve the nation’s health.”
“You have to attack chronic disease,” Emanuel continued. “He also writes that we have to look at ultra-processed foods in the food chain and how they cause obesity in the country and stop that. And we have to get conflict of interest issues out of the review of drugs, devices, nutrition, et cetera.”
Kennedy has sought to address a rising chronic disease rate that affects roughly three in five Americans as part of a Make America Healthy Again movement, which has been known as MAHA. He has also suggested slashing departments that he said were not performing their duties, and has vowed to address the alleged conflicts of interest between “industry and government.”
“In some categories … entire departments, like the nutrition department of the FDA that have to go, that are not doing their job, they’re not protecting our kids,” Kennedy told a MSNBC reporter during an interview that aired Nov. 6. “Why do we have Fruit Loops that have 18 or 19 ingredients and you go to Canada and it’s got two or three?”
“We have a generational opportunity to bring together the greatest minds in science, medicine, industry, and government to put an end to the chronic disease epidemic,” Kennedy said after Trump announced his selection.
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