Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has made ending “corporate capture” of the federal health agencies a key tenet of his plan to eradicate what the MAHA Commission Assessment describes as “threats to American childhood that have been exacerbated by perverse incentives.”
But health care lobbyists, regulatory experts and advocates for reduced industry involvement all told NOTUS the same thing: So far, Kennedy’s words don’t match his actions.
“The rhetoric is quite different, but it doesn’t seem like the reality is obviously different,” said Diana Zuckerman, president of the National Center for Health Research, who has criticized the Food and Drug Administration’s funding structure that relies on collecting fees from the companies whose products it regulates. “There’s all kinds of conflicts of interest that have been absolutely ignored by HHS and, as far as we can tell, still are.”