Why RFK Jr. Is The Wrong Choice For HHS Secretary

I have enormous respect and admiration for the work that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. performed during the Covid pandemic. Indeed, during the early stages, when he was speaking on the streets of Europe in spite of his vocal impairment, and drawing tens of thousands of people, it was clear he was doing something pretty special.

And after another physician urged me to read his book, The Real Anthony Fauci, I was astonished that he had gotten every aspect of the public health response to the Covid pandemic precisely right. This was a guy who knew his stuff, and also knew how to communicate it.

When the socialists blocked him out of the presidential race and he teamed up with Trump, it was an auspicious moment. But we now have learned the deal that was made.

The fact is that he brings a mixed bag to the table, at best. He is pro-abortion and pro-socialized medicine. He does not respect the proper constitutional limits with regard to the activities of the federal government. The job of HHS Secretary has enormous authority with implications for these important questions.

I think he should have been given perhaps an undersecretary position with responsibility over certain public health functions of HHS, or perhaps a position as public health “czar” within the White House. That would for the most part take him out of the loop with regard to abortion-related policy and socialized medicine.

His zeal to make the FDA more stringent might appear to offer great promise, but there is a flip side. The FDA is an unconstitutional agency– as is the CDC, the NIH and the entirety of HHS. We can’t make those go away overnight; but we cannot pretend that making the FDA more stringent on a massive scale is proper constitutionally.

The FDA has “jurisdiction” over the abortion pill, which raises another set of issues given the fact he is pro-abortion.

Bobby Kennedy, Jr. has important contributions to make on the public health response to COVID, all that entailed, and some of the structural reforms that need to be made within HHS. But he is not the right guy to give authority over the entire realm of health policy.