Over the last few years, a peculiar intersection between wellness and politics has emerged. As the January 6 insurrection on the Capitol and the COVID-19 pandemic showed, QAnon and Donald Trump adherents were no longer just middle-aged, conservative white men. Many of those who embraced right-wing fringe beliefs were self-described love-and-light, alternative-health types, too. Take Jake Angeli for example, the so-called "QAnon Shaman,” who was granted the right to be fed an all-organic diet in jail in line with his religious practice. Now that President-elect Donald Trump has picked Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as his next secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, a movement around “Making America Healthy Again” (also referred to as MAHA) has materialized among Trump supporters, bringing to light the support from alternative health types.
As I’ve reported before, Kennedy represents a “dismantling” of the public health system, something that traditionally progressive alternative-health types support. Kennedy’s plan as head of HHS could include restricting federal vaccine support, drug development, and banning a number of food additives — all part of a larger initiative to tackle America’s chronic disease epidemic. Chronic diseases are indeed the leading cause of illness, death and disability in the country. It’s estimated that 45% of the American population has at least one chronic disease. People with chronic diseases account for 81% of hospital admissions.
Kennedy isn’t wrong to focus on solving this crisis. The issue is that Kennedy promotes solutions that aren’t backed by scientific evidence. The country’s chronic disease epidemic won’t be solved by dismantling public health and touting alternative health solutions. Instead, experts say there needs to be a focus on improving the lack of social support in the United States if the chronic disease crisis has any hope of being addressed.
“The truth is, when you have high deductibles, you have to pay co-payments and deductibles, they're disincentives,” Dr. Georges C. Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association (APHA), told Salon, elaborating on the difficulties of accessing health care in America. “The administration's got to pay attention to those social determinants to be able to make sure people can get to the doctor; they’ve got to have insurance coverage — if you can't take off from work and those services aren't available nights, weekends, holidays, you're not going to get there.”
In other words, there’s the lack of social support, like universal paid sick leave in the United States, that’s contributing to America’s declining life expectancy. Robert Half published results from a survey in 2019 showing that nine out of 10 employees go to work sick. According to the survey, more than half of those who go to work sick said they go because they have too much work on their plate. Another 40% said they go to work while ill because they don't want to use up their sick time. The United States is the only wealthy nation without nationwide paid sick leave and nationwide parental leave.
Daphne Delvaux, Employment Attorney and Founder of The Mamattorney, a platform educating women on their rights at work, pointed out to Salon that according to OSHA data, workplace stress causes an estimate 120,000 deaths in the United States each year.
“One of the main arguments of the MAHA movement is that Americans have shorter life expectancies than Europeans,” Delvaux said. “Having experienced life in France, the main difference in culture is not the food quality, but the pace of life.”
France has strong labor unions, 30 days of paid vacation rights, and a younger retirement age, Delvaux added.
“They strike a lot and are generally not scared to destabilize the entire economy to get their needs met,” Delvaux said. “Of course, this is easier to do when you have strong union protections and when your health care is not tethered to you showing up to work.”
Not only does research suggest that universal paid leave is better for public health, but also business. A recent systematic review published in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine last year found that paid leave was associated with numerous positive consequences for businesses — like increased job satisfaction, increased job commitment, increased firm performance, and improved retention.
Notably, Trump has supported efforts by Republican lawmakers to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which makes health insurance affordable to more Americans. As recently reported by CBS, with ACA subsidies set to expire in 2025, that could leave millions of people without health insurance during Trump’s presidency. During Trump’s first presidency, ACA enrollment declined and the number of uninsured Americans increased by 2.3 million.
Benjamin, from APHA, said other countries have been able to figure out how to maintain healthier populations, and longer lifespans, by investing more in social services and preventative medicine, like making preventative screening tests more accessible.
“We do a terrible job of screening for many diseases,” Benjamin said. “Seventy-percent of our population is uninsured, and that means all those people who don't have insurance, and having insurance doesn't guarantee you'll get screened, but people who are uninsured are much less likely to get screened, particularly for the more invasive checks.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), most chronic diseases are caused by poor nutrition, physical inactivity, smoking and excessive alcohol use. Benjamin said to address chronic diseases in America, the administration should deal with food insecurity, too.
“It’s not just that people don't have healthy diets, but there are far too many people in our country that don't have enough food,” he said. “So that means investments in our food security programs, and Commodity Supplemental Food Program.”
While those are run by the United States Department of Agriculture, Benjamin said, the HHS has “enormous influence” on what USDA does. Food deserts, where people face barriers to accessing fresh, healthy and affordable food, are also a problem in the United States contributing to a rise in chronic disease. And yet, there are already reports that Trump’s economic advisors are in favor of cutting food stamps.
“The policy initiatives that we see a lot of that was in Project 2025 go in face of the articulation of Mr. Kennedy and the things he wants to do,” Benjamin said. “Those things are going to make it very difficult for him to achieve these goals of making America healthy again.”
