America's Health Still in Jeopardy
"Good intent and high purpose are not enough; all such programs depend for their success upon efficient, responsible administration."
More than 70 years ago, the department now known as Health and Human Services (HHS) was established under Republican President Dwight Eisenhower. In Eisenhower’s March 12, 1953 message to Congress about the formation of the originally named Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, he communicated:
Such action is demanded by the importance and magnitude of these functions, which affect the well-being of millions of our citizens. The programs carried on by the Public Health Service include, for example, the conduct and promotion of research into the prevention and cure of such dangerous ailments as cancer and heart disease..
There should be an unremitting effort to improve those health, education, and social security programs which have proved their value..
But good intent and high purpose are not enough; all such programs depend for their success upon efficient, responsible administration.
Yesterday, the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission publicly released their Make Our Children Healthy Again Strategy Report to “advance gold-standard science” among other objectives. This strategy report follows the MAHA report released in May 2025 “to advise and assist the President on how best to exercise his authority to address the childhood chronic disease crisis.”
President Trump’s Executive Order in February 2025 stated the purpose of MAHA:
To fully address the growing health crisis in America, we must re-direct our national focus, in the public and private sectors, toward understanding and drastically lowering chronic disease rates and ending childhood chronic disease. This includes fresh thinking on nutrition, physical activity, healthy lifestyles, over-reliance on medication and treatments, the effects of new technological habits, environmental impacts, and food and drug quality and safety. We must restore the integrity of the scientific process by protecting expert recommendations from inappropriate influence and increasing transparency regarding existing data. We must ensure our healthcare system promotes health rather than just managing disease.
The MAHA Commission chaired by HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy, Jr. includes, but is not limited to, the Secretaries of Agriculture and Housing and Urban Development, the Commissioner of Food and Drugs, the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Director of the National Institutes of Health.
Prior to the MAHA strategy report release, a food lobbyist told Politico “The White House has certainly gotten the message, both from agriculture and the food sector, that they are on the edge of a nanny state.” The lobbyist went on to say, “the message we’ve gotten from the White House is, ‘Don’t worry, we’re not letting the crazy people run rampant over the food sector.’”
Which begs the question, are crazy people running rampant over other sectors?