RIP, MAHA. We hardly knew ye.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda has a simple premise: Americans don’t need more access to medical care. Instead, the best way to improve our country’s health is through better nutrition and exposure to fewer environmental toxins. Alas, as was evident from the health and human services secretary’s congressional testimony Tuesday about the administration’s budget requests, his boss is currently A) taking away nutritional assistance and B) expanding use of environmental toxins.
That should underscore the obvious: The Trump administration’s MAHA agenda was never really about making America healthier. In addition to purging the “deep state” of medical experts, it has served as cover for broader GOP efforts to shrink federal spending on health care coverage. To partly offset the cost of regressive tax cuts, Republicans’ budget bill would slash nearly $800 billion from Medicaid and cause almost 11 million more people to become uninsured, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects.
Kennedy, other Trump officials and Republican congressional leaders have repeatedly denied that this would harm Americans. Kennedy has instead emphasized that societal factors, including too much medical intervention, are the main causes of poor health outcomes. For example, his “MAHA Report” (the one citing all those nonexistent studies) blamed the rise in childhood chronic disease on four factors: poor diet, environmental toxins, lifestyle changes in the digital age and “overmedicalization.”
GOP lawmakers have backed his message. As Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall, a physician, put it in January: “By the time you come to my office as a doctor, I can impact maybe 10 or 20 percent of your health outcomes. ... We need to make these healthy foods affordable, available as well — and then try to eliminate and minimize the toxins that we’re exposed to.”
He’s not wrong that health outcomes are influenced by access to good nutrition and a clean environment, among other societal factors. The problem is the GOP agenda makes these factors worse. Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, for instance, would slash nutritional assistance nearly every way possible.
It would escalate so-called work requirements (really, paperwork requirements) for food stamps. It also would eliminate a 30-year-old, evidence-based nutrition education program called SNAP-Ed. This program partners with schools, churches and other local organizations to help people receiving food assistance learn how to shop for and cook healthier meals and lead more active lifestyles.
Exactly the kind of thing that MAHA partisans should support.
Another measure in the legislation would force states to either make up for large federal cuts to food stamp funding, take food assistance away from a substantial number of families or end the program entirely. Moreover, this bill is hardly the only vehicle Republican politicians are using to take healthy food away from people who need it. As Kennedy was calling for better nutrition in school lunches, for example, the Trump administration cut funding for the program. (Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins described it as “nonessential.”)
And in a separate bill, House Republicans plan to hobble a 50-year-old program known as WIC, which gives food assistance to low-income pregnant women, new moms, babies and young children who are diagnosed as being at nutritional risk. WIC has historically had strong bipartisan support, but in accordance with Trump’s latest budget request, the bill would begin slashing the fruit and vegetable benefit for recipients.
In addition to being anti-MAHA (and generally cruel), this funding cut might well cost the government money in the long run. Research has shown that spending on prenatal nutrition and healthier food for poor kids offers a huge return on investment. Each dollar spent on WIC saves more than a dollar on other government spending programs later on because those kids grow up to be more productive adults who need fewer government services.