RFK Jr is half right about American healthcare

What would have to happen for the anti-vaxxer-in-chief to do more good than harm?

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It is not hard to construct a scenario in which Donald Trump's plans to Make America Healthy Again (or Maha) do the opposite of that. His proposed secretary of health, Mr Robert F. Kennedy junior, is one of the country's more prominent vaccine skeptics. The man who would be in charge of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which provides health coverage for two in five Americans, would be Dr Mehmet Oz, a TV doctor who has talked about the medical benefits of communicating with the dead and invited a Reiki healer to assist him during surgery. Dr Dave Weldon, a former congressman and doctor, who has also cast doubt on the safety of vaccines, would lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which oversees the country's vaccine schedules.

Unless the Nixon-to-China theory applies to public health, these are not the people America would want in charge of public health in a pandemic—or even just a regular epidemic.

At the same time, a central part of the Maha agenda is something most experts agree on: America's main health problem is chronic diseases, and far too little is being done to prevent them. Mr Kennedy has some sensible ideas about how to tackle that. So it also is worth exploring what positive changes his tenure could bring about.

About 60 percent of American adults have a chronic illness, such as diabetes, heart disease, or cancer—40 percent have more than one. They cost America US$3.7 trillion (S$5 trillion) in 2016 (or 20 percent of GDP) in medical spending and lost productivity. Yet America's healthcare system is focused on treating rather than preventing them. Mr Kennedy wants to cut unhealthy foods from the American diet. He thinks the CDC should be doing more about chronic diseases. And he wants a bigger share of government-funded research to focus on them. Done right, these are things that can put America on a healthier path.