The final days of the presidential campaign show how Trump would ‘make America healthy again’

From claims that America’s leading vaccine critic would lead health agencies to new promises for “massive reforms” of Obamacare, the chaotic final week of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign will likely serve as a preview of what “Make America healthy again‘ could mean if the former president returns to power.

The jumble of proposals echoed conservative policy documents, channeled residual anger from the post-pandemic anti-vaccination movement and alarmed experts who help shape the country’s health policy.

“My initial reaction is that a Trump administration would be the most anti-public health and anti-science administration in history,” said Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown Law School.

“I think health is an important part of the vote,” he said.

During the final week of the campaign, Trump said he would “release” the nation’s top vaccine skeptic from the nation’s food and drug agencies and refused to rule out a ban certain vaccines. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson also promised “massive reforms‘ of Obamacare if Trump wins.

Vaccines are among the most effective public health interventions, saving an estimated 154 million lives worldwide over 50 years. a study in the Lancet. Obamacare does have that grown in popularity even among Republicans.

“It reminds me of the chaos of the first administration, in the middle of the pandemic,” Gostin said, referring to a time when Trump pushed fake treatments for Covid from injecting disinfectant to ivermectin Unpleasant hydroxychloroquine – all debunked and often actively harmful.

“But it’s even worse,” Gostin continued, “because while Trump was at least surrounded by credible scientists like Tony Fauci, I don’t think there will be any similar restraint in the next Trump administration.”

The official Republican party platform provides few details, but blames immigrants for high health care prices and says the party will “commit” to lowering health care prices through “choice” and “transparency.” It also promises to “protect” Medicare from Democrats, who plan to allow “tens of millions of new illegal immigrants” to enroll in the program.

Voters in both parties cite health care costs as their own main health problem. However, transparency measures would likely only result in a 1% reduction in healthcare prices over ten years, the report says Congressional Budget Office. “Choice” is often a euphemism for rolling back health insurance regulations, allowing Americans to buy plans that cover fewer services.

Migrants without papers do not eligible to enroll in Medicare, and the Democratic presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, withdrew of a policy that would have provided government-sponsored health care to all U.S. residents regardless of immigration status.

A detailed look at how Trump’s supporters might try to change U.S. health policy can be found in the conservative playbook Project 2025. There, health policy proposals are dominated by calls to restrict abortion and reduce the role of scientific research.

In it, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) should be known as the “Department of Life,” approval for medication abortion should be revoked, and health policy should embrace “fatherhood” and the “nuclear family.” and stop research that amounts to ‘woke transgender activism’.

HHS must stop focusing on “LGBTQ+ equality” and end policies that “subsidize single motherhood, discourage work, and punish marriage.” The subagencies, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, should be split in two, with the power to make policy recommendations severely curtailed. The “incestuous relationship” between government researchers and vaccine manufacturers must end, the plan says.

As voters head to the polls, the people who could institute these policies also come into focus. Robert F Kennedy Jr, the former independent candidate and staunch vaccine critic, said he was “promised” a role by Trump in helping national health agencies.

“The key, which President Trump has promised me, is control of public health agencies,” Kennedy said during a Zoom call with supporters. ABC News. These agencies include “HHS and its subagencies, CDC, Food and Drug Administration (National Institutes of Health) and a few others. And also the United States Department of Agriculture, which, you know, is the key to making America healthy.”

Kennedy ended his presidential campaign and endorsed Trump in August after a conspiracy theory-fueled campaign that revealed he once had health problems linked to a brain worm. the head sawn of a whale and dumped a dead bear in Central Park.

Dr. Joseph Ladapo has been suggested as one potential choice for the head of HHS. Florida’s Harvard University-educated surgeon general warned state residents against using Covid-19 vaccines and allowed unvaccinated children to attend school during a measles outbreak.

While ideas from Trump’s supporters are easily refuted, health researchers and policy experts said they are taking the threat of their influence deadly seriously, highlighting in the past week how legitimate concerns about the power of pharmaceutical and chemical companies could be exploited.

“I think we’re leaning toward a libertarian left,” said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the vaccine education center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a member of a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) vaccine advisory committee.

Offit said he worried that the vaccine mandates are leading some Americans to believe misinformation about vaccines, and while he supported them, he worried they may have “done more harm than good.”

Another investigative lawyer who spoke anonymously Scientific magazine said: “We’re all panicking… I don’t know anyone who isn’t worried about this.”

Soon the nation will know to what extent such messages resonated with voters.

“I’m surprised that the anti-vaccine rhetoric is considered persuasive enough to get you elected,” Offit said. “It amazes me that such a significant portion of the population would be forced to do this.”

Read more about the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage