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Joyce Maker is a former college administrator and former Republican state senator who represented Washington County in the Maine Legislature.
President Donald Trump has nominated Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to be the next secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). If he is confirmed, I believe it would put Mainers’ health care and lives at risk.
It is critical that our leaders have the experience to effectively lead our nation’s health care system. Kennedy has little of it. He has less than a decade of experience in his only leadership role, which is leading the anti-vaccine advocacy group Children’s Health Defense. The group lists fewer than 10 staff members — compared to more than 80,000 employees of HHS across a diverse array of sub-agencies and departments. Even former staffers have expressed concern about Kennedy’s ability to run an agency as large as HHS.
Being a retired administrator at Washington County Community College, I can attest that running an organization is not simple. I’m not saying I would be qualified to run an 80,000-person organization because my experience at a community college doesn’t translate to health care and an organization of that side. But that’s the point relative experience matters.
Without medical expertise or training, Kennedy has demonstrated little knowledge of the massive public health programs run by HHS like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health. Mainers rely on HHS to manage their health care coverage through Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act. Together, those three programs provide coverage to just under half of the entire U.S. population.
Being the oldest state in the country we desperately need to have confidence that health care will be delivered. An inexperienced, unqualified leader for HHS would put critical, life-saving health care in jeopardy.
Not only is Kennedy inexperienced, but his ideas are dangerous and antithetical to the purpose of HHS — keeping Americans healthy.
Kennedy has promised to stop all research into infectious diseases and drug development, saying he “does not believe that infectious disease is an enormous threat to human health.” Under his leadership, it could lead to a deadly resurgence in childhood illnesses like measles and polio. America would become deeply unprepared to respond to serious health threats and it would impede the development of new treatments for serious diseases like cancer. A delay in finding treatments or cures could mean life or death for thousands.
The consequences of this nomination will touch nearly every household in the nation. Not only does Kennedy have a long history of pushing dangerous and outlandish health-related conspiracy theories, but his inexperience puts vital programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, at risk. Kennedy’s sole focus could be pushing radical policies that put health care for millions at risk. The American people deserve a leader at HHS who believes in science and is committed to lowering costs and protecting health care coverage.
