By DANIEL STONE
As a health care provider, I think about Secretary Xavier Becerra and his Division of Well being and Human Companies (HHS) to be allies of practitioners like me. The behemoth federal company administers Medicare and Medicaid, the Meals and Drug Administration, and a military of public well being employees. The Surgeon Normal, symbolic chief of the nation’s healthcare suppliers, reviews to HHS. For many years, the Division has supported medical science in safeguarding the general public’s well being. Now that sacred belief faces the specter of Donald Trump’s nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to run HHS.
RFK’s first drawback is a shocking lack of {qualifications}. After a laudable conquer drug habit, he used his authorized background to work on environmental safety. Kennedy by no means held a federal authorities place nor administered any public company. He now seems poised for on-the-job coaching at an company with 80,000 staff and a $1.7 Trillion finances. In distinction, Becerra served for years in Congress and on its Well being Sub-Committee. He additionally served as State Lawyer Normal, managing 4,800 staff. The qualification difficulty just isn’t political. Throughout Trump’s first time period, his final HHS secretary, Alex Azar, had served as HHS normal counsel and president of pharmaceutical big Eli Lilly. RFK has nothing remotely resembling his would-be predecessors’ {qualifications}.
Sadly, RFK’s shortcomings go properly past mere lack of qualification. His distortions and public denials of established medical science infuriate practitioners like me. He casts baseless doubt on the well-established advantages of vaccines and on the polio vaccine in particular. Regardless of the seven a long time since polio vaccine’s introduction, docs nonetheless see sufferers who had been contaminated earlier than it was obtainable. My affected person Donna, born in 1955, counts herself amongst this group. She wears leg braces and sometimes struggles with day by day actions. For me, she symbolizes those that accidentally of start or happenstance missed the profound advantages of vaccines that RFK now disparages.
RFK additionally opposes fluoridation of water. One other affected person, Judith, age 80, scoffs at such skepticism. She grew up in Niagara Falls, NY, earlier than fluoridation and its dental safety. She remembers her childhood dentist discovering 13 cavities and the trauma and ache of extended dental work at an early age.
Main care docs like me spend our skilled lives working to stop life limiting and life-threatening situations like these affecting Donna and Judith. We wrestle with the challenges of insurance coverage denials, clunky digital data, healthcare paperwork and ballooning affected person hundreds. We don’t want an HHS administrator opposing our efforts to offer customary preventive care. And if RFK’s judgment on vaccines is so poor, who can belief him on different essential healthcare points like pandemic administration or drug authorizations?
How ought to physicians reply? I just lately exchanged messages with a politically various group of native medical leaders. All of them opposed RFK however disagreed on techniques. Some mentioned that the American Medical Affiliation management believes RFK to be headed for affirmation. They worry that failed opposition would possibly jeopardize RFK’s help on Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements.
The native docs’ reasoning displays the identical transactional “what’s in it for me” strategy that led to RFK’s nomination. RFK mortgaged a share of the Kennedy legacy to assist Trump win the Presidency. Now Trump is returning the favor with a cupboard place regardless of RFK’s lack of {qualifications} and practitioners’ opposition. Ought to organized medication actually undertake the identical “what’s in it for us” strategy?
I informed my colleagues that I can settle for being on the shedding facet. Regardless of my efforts, my sufferers generally get sick and even die. However I don’t stop on them or ask, “what’s in it for me?” So I can’t shrug my shoulders as these representing America’s docs swallow RFK’s nomination like a dose of castor oil. The senators voting on RFK have their very own docs and medical societies of their house states. These docs should clarify to their senators why RFK is unacceptable to these on healthcare’s entrance traces.
I can’t shrug my shoulders as these representing America’s docs swallow RFK’s nomination like a dose of castor oil. I’ve belonged to the California Medical Affiliation for greater than 20 years and to the American Faculty of Physicians, the nation’s largest medical commerce affiliation, for over 30. Though pleased with these associations, I’ll resign from each in the event that they fail to difficulty sturdy, evidence-based statements explaining why the RFK nomination is unacceptable. I hope my colleagues do likewise.
As physicians, we take an oath to do no hurt. Typically doing nothing causes hurt. It’s time for organized medication to do the suitable factor and battle the RFK nomination.
Daniel Stone is a training internist and geriatrician with Cedars Sinai Medical Group. This piece was initially published in the Jewish Journal
