The Commission to ‘Make America Healthy Again’: Opening a New Conversation on Health 

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., our new secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services has a herculean task: “Make America Healthy Again.” 

As Politico recently reported, Kennedy’s ambitious agenda could even dwarf the efforts of Elon Musk, the genius entrepreneur attempting to streamline federal bureaucracies and save taxpayers the hundreds of billions of dollars lost each year to waste, fraud, and abuse. 

With his February 2025 executive order, President Donald Trump is reinforcing Kennedy’s mission to tackle the nation’s epidemic of chronic illness and authorizing him to chair a special commission to investigate the root causes of the American health crisis. Within 100 days of that order, Kennedy’s commission must report on the scientific findings on the nature and extent of chronic diseases among children. To combat chronic diseases, such as obesity and diabetes, within 180 days the commission is to provide the president a strategy to roll back this rising tide of American illness. 

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The scope of Kennedy’s task matches the enormity of the problem. Childhood disease generates adult morbidity and premature mortality, and that is why American life expectancy lags behind comparable nations. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that 90% of America’s health care spending (now totaling $4.9 trillion) is spent on mostly preventable chronic diseases and mental health conditions. About 60% of Americans have at least one chronic disease, as Trump noted in his executive order, and 40% have two or more. 

And there is a direct relationship between obesity and chronic diseases. Americans are generally overweight. Worse, over 40% of adults are obese and so are almost 20% of children. This contributes to the onset of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, and even cancer. 

Poor Nutrition

The information is not new, just ignored. So, we keep digging our graves with our knives and forks. We eat too much, drink too much, and we (I raise my hand here) are all too sedentary. We also eat too much of the wrong things: an overconsumption of refined carbohydrates and sugars, especially sugary drinks, and highly processed foods. 

Kennedy is representing the views of many others, including top medical professionals. Former Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., a cardiovascular surgeon, told Congress last September that poor nutrition is America’s leading cause of death and disability, and is inflicting serious damage to our economy.

As Frist reminded the House Ways and Means Committee, Type 2 diabetes—which can and should be prevented—imposes $200 billion annually in direct medical costs alone, not to mention the large indirect costs of that chronic illness in lost or reduced employment, wages, and productivity. 

Kennedy’s focus on the quality of our food is long overdue and very welcome. During his 2024 congressional testimony, Frist also emphasized that his fellow physicians should not only conduct patients’ standard metabolic screening but also coordinate with professional nutritionists to make sure that patients know and understand what is wrong with them. They should not only be made aware of what their annual blood tests (such as those for blood sugar and liver enzymes) are telling them, Frist insists, but what they also must do to improve their diets and their overall health. 

A New Conversation

Kennedy’s commission is a great start, and his firm commitment to a rigorous pursuit of science and full transparency in releasing agency data and information is a welcome departure from the Biden-Harris administration’s sorry performance; especially its scandalous refusal to respond to legitimate congressional inquiries.    

The commission will focus on providing scientific information and offer strategic recommendations while doubtless resisting the temptation to impose more government mandates and restrictions. Beyond undermining personal freedoms, such detailed bureaucratic policing is impractical. As G.K. Chesterton, the great British essayist, warned almost a century ago, “When laws are passed forbidding a citizen to do something like lighting a cigarette or eating a chocolate cream, bureaucracy in its nature must arrive at bankruptcy.” 

The Trump administration can and should treat American citizens like adults. Provide our citizens with the scientific truth and most will respond appropriately, just as they have in reducing their use of tobacco following the U.S. surgeon general’s warnings on its indisputable dangers. 

Kennedy and the commission should release and publicize the best scientific data on the relationship between processed food and weight gain, as well as obesity and the myriad medical conditions that follow from it. In so doing, the government can pursue a positive, educational approach, and inform the public which food products are determined to be healthy and nutritious.  

America is on the verge of a new national conversation on health policy. It is likely to transcend, though not end, our perennial preoccupation with the defects of our health insurance markets or Medicare’s bizarre provider payment schemes. 

It’s about health itself; and it’s about time.