NBC News
On Wednesday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will appear before the Senate Finance Committee for the first of two confirmation hearings as candidate of President Donald Trump for the position of Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS, for its acronym in English).
If confirmed, Kennedy would have broad control over a set of 18 agencies, including the centers for disease control and prevention, food and medication administration, national health institutes and Medicare and Medicaid service centers.
“This is the most important audience of all the appointments of Trump’s cabinet,” said Lawrence Gostin, director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law of the University of Georgetown. “The HHS secretary has enormous power over national medical care, global health and directly supervises tens of thousands of scientists, doctors and nurses.”
The audience is expected to be controversial due to the controversial points of view of Kennedy, including its repeated false statements that relate vaccines to autism, a discredited theory for decades of scientific research.
In a financial statement dated Tuesday, Kennedy declared that, since December, he is no longer president or head advisor of Children’s Health Defense, a non -profit anti -moods founded by him. The group has filed demands against the federal government, including one that challenged the authorization of the Covid vaccine for children.
Kennedy will continue to charge fees for the ongoing litigation of Gardasil, a merck vaccine that protects against HPV, according to the statement. The HPV vaccine prevents cervical cancer and other types of cancer. In a statement to NBC News, Merck said in part: “The claimant’s allegations have no merit, and we continue to defend ourselves vigorously against these claims.”
A Kennedy spokesman declined to comment.
Wednesday’s hearing will be followed on Thursday another hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension Commission.
Next, we present five key sanitary themes to which you have to pay attention during Kennedy’s audiences.
Vaccines
Kennedy’s nomination to direct HHS occurs at a time when children’s vaccination rates are falling. According to KFF, a non-profit group that investigates health policy issues, less than 93% of infant garden children had received all their vaccines required by the State in the 2023-2024 school year, compared to 95 % in the 2019-2020 school year.
Parents doubt more than ever in vaccinating their children, Dr. Paul Offit, an expert vaccines at Philadelphia Children’s Hospital on Tuesday, during a round table on vaccines organized by the independent senator by Vermont Bernie Sanders.
“The problem is not only that we have largely eliminated these diseases, but that we have eliminated the memory of these diseases,” said Offit, “and for that reason, parents now have more fear of vaccines’ safety, real or imaginary, that of the diseases that prevent ”.
At the Round Table, Sanders, a higher rank member of the Senate Help Committee, said the “danger” of reverse decades of progress in public health. He has not yet said publicly if he would support Kennedy’s nomination.
Experts fear that the long history of Kennedy anti -vaccine activism could involve significant changes in child vaccination policies.
As Secretary of Health, Kennedy would influence the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices of CDC, an independent group of health experts that helps the agency to make recommendations to states and insurers about which vaccines to cover, including children’s children.
Senators have declared that they have spoken with Kennedy about vaccines, highlighting the importance of the issue. Shortly after the elections, Kennedy declared NBC News that he will not “take away the vaccines from anyone.”
“Let’s be clear, there is an overwhelming consensus in the scientific community that vaccines have saved millions of lives, avoided a massive human suffering and detained the propagation of infectious diseases such as polyomyelitis, smallpox and measles,” Sanders said.
Public Health Defense Groups, including the Committee for the Protection of Health Care, expressed their alarm for Kennedy’s opinions on the subject. Earlier this month, the Committee published a letter on the Internet, signed by more than 15,000 doctors, in which they urged senators to vote against their confirmation.
Obamacare
“Although vaccines are likely to monopolize much of the attention, the ability of RFK Jr. to somehow affect the population’s health coverage is much greater,” said Larry Levitt, executive vice president of health policy of the KFF.
In addition to Medicare and Medicaid, the HHS, through the Medicare and Medicaid service centers, supervises the application of the affordable assistance law. Together, the three programs provide insurance to about 168 million people, more than half of the American population, according to Levitt. The department also carries out dissemination activities, making sure that people have access to information about their insurance options and provides financing to states to improve their insurance coverage, particularly for not insured.
Republicans have been in favor of allowing the subsidies that make Obamacare’s premiums more affordable, and have also expressed interest in imposing work requirements to access Medicaid, an unpopular disposition. The Trump candidate to direct the services centers of Medicare and Medicaid, Dr. Mehmet Oz, has expressed his support for the privatization of Medicare.
Trump promised during the campaign to replace the affordable assistance law, but Kennedy has offered little information about his views about the program or insurance in general.
“What do you think of Medicaid’s work requirements? The affordable assistance law? Does improved financial aid? ” Levitt asked. “He supervises an agency that affects all those things.”
Aviar flu
Kennedy could take office while the H5N1 virus of the avian flu razes the country.
Until January 16, it is estimated that 928 hairs of dairy cows have been infected in 16 states, according to the Department of Agriculture. There have been at least 67 cases in people, most of whom are agricultural workers. A person, an older adult from Louisiana who had a backy flock, died because of the virus.
Experts fear that avian flu can trigger another pandemic if it mutates and easily spreads among people. So far no cases of avian flu transmission have been documented among humans in the United States.
“It is a disease that we must take very seriously, and let a vaccine skeptic direct the answer is dangerous,” said Gostin, from the University of Georgetown.
Kennedy would supervise the CDCs, which have managed much of the outbreak and monitoring the risk for human beings, as well as the administration for the preparation and strategic response, an HHS agency responsible for the management of the national reserves of vaccines against the flu, which currently includes two candidates for avian flu vaccine. It would have authority over the FDA, which must authorize vaccines before they can be used in people.
In December, Biden administration officials said they had no plans to authorize stored avian flu vaccines, leaving Trump administration health officials, possibly including Kennedy, the decision to be necessary.
“That worries me a lot,” said Gostin, “because I don’t think RFK Jr. will accelerate the delivery of an avian flu vaccine where it is needed.”
Food guidelines
Kennedy has become a priority the safer food defense, promising to take energetic measures against additives and dyes that have been related to health problems.
According to experts, it is something that the legislators of both sides will support Kennedy. (Earlier this month, the FDA, under the Biden administration, banned red number 3, an artificial dye used in thousands of food but has been related to cancer in laboratory rats).
Marion Nestle, emerrita professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at the University of New York, said that Kennedy could be questioned is in the development of dietary guidelines for Americans of 2025, if the Republicans in Congress are willing to press him about.
“You might think that Republicans would worry about the effects of the measures proposed on food, fishing and dairy industries, but seem willing to accept what Trump wants,” Nestle said.
The dietary guidelines, which the HHS is responsible for supervising together with the Department of Agriculture, will be in force for the next five years.
Last month, a committee issued its proposal, recommending that people eat more beans, peas and lentils such as protein sources and reduce the consumption of processed and red meat.
Kennedy can decide whether to adopt some or all recommendations.
Gostin also said he hopes that legislators will press on what Kennedy is going to do to face the food industry.
“Talk a lot about nutrition,” Gostin said, “but what are exactly his plans?”
Sleep medications
In November, the Biden Administration proposed a rule that forces Medicare and Medicaid to offer drug coverage for weight loss, a measure that would drastically expand access to medicines. At present, they are only covered for diabetes, the risk of heart disease and sleep apnea. A standard two decades ago prevents programs from covering medicines to lose weight.
However, Stacie Dusetzina, a professor of health policy at the University of Vanderbilt in Nashville, Tennessee, said the rule will have to be completed under the Trump administration.
“Yes, I think it is an important and consistent political action that would affect many people and spending on Medicare and Medicaid in a very substantial way,” he said.
The important government expenditure in Ozempic and Wegovy earned them a place in the Medicare Medication Price Negotiations of this year, another issue on which Kennedy has kept silent.
Kennedy has been critical of the extremely popular drugs to lose weight such as Ozempic and Wegovy, and in October he told Greg Gutfeld of Fox News that the companies “have to sell them to the Americans because we are very stupid and very addicted to the medications.”
Apparently, he later retracted those statements. In an interview with CNBC in December, Kennedy said that “the first response line should be the lifestyle, it should be eaten well, make sure you don’t become obese, and that those LPG drugs have a place.”
“My casual impression is that it is more than the type of diet and exercise and clean the food supply,” Dusetzina said. “It is one of those people I am going to follow closely.”