Recent reporting from POLITICO and The New York Times would have you believe that Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is derelict at his job, but the overwhelming evidence proves otherwise.
Here’s the truth: Kennedy’s work at HHS has helped lower healthcare costs for millions of Americans.
Kennedy is not neglecting his job. These so-called “journalists” who are turning a blind eye to his publicly reported accomplishments are the ones engaged in neglect.
In a rebuttal on social media, Kennedy did a more than adequate job sticking up for himself. He pointed out that his calendar, which is quite busy, is a matter of public record.
“You quote anonymous employees, some of whom I fired or who quit to avoid being fired,” Kennedy wrote, adding that the NYT approached this story with “a preconceived thesis.”
He continued: “You also deceptively quote HHS employees without identifying whether they were among those I fired, thereby depriving your readers of the opportunity to make an independent judgment about their credibility.”
If only the NYT and POLITICO had used something called a Google search engine, they would have learned about all that Kennedy has done to, for example, cut down on Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval timelines for prescription drugs.
For many decades, Americans felt disgust toward politicians who preached that only they could lower high prescription drug prices but ultimately failed to deliver. Bureaucratic delays at the FDA kept drug prices high. Promising new treatments underwent several years of bureaucratic red tape before, and if, they ever made their way to consumers.
That’s why Kennedy has taken immediate, swift action.
He recently reported on two oncology drug approvals. The approvals, Kennedy said, were “the fastest in [FDA] history.” Before that, approvals for comparable drugs were excruciatingly long and denied patients treatments within a reasonable timeframe.
Kennedy’s focus on expedited approval is a big deal. According to a study from former acting chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers Tomas Philipson, the agency could create more than $10 trillion in economic value and increase patients’ access to lifesaving treatments by doing just this.
Kennedy has been plenty busy with other tasks.
Kennedy recently announced that his agency would work to fight Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses, which have become a growing public health concern in many parts of the country. The initiative includes improving surveillance, expanding research into prevention and treatment options, and coordinating more closely with state and local health agencies. For the hundreds of thousands of Americans diagnosed with Lyme disease each year, better prevention and treatment options could have a meaningful impact on quality of life.
Kennedy has also made childhood chronic disease a central focus of his tenure.
Earlier this year, Kennedy released the Make America Healthy Again Commission report, which examined rising rates of childhood obesity, diabetes, autoimmune disorders, and other chronic illnesses. The report called for a closer examination of nutrition, ultra-processed foods, environmental exposures, and other factors that may be contributing to worsening health outcomes among American children.
Kennedy once said that he prayed on his knees every morning — for 20 years — for God to put him in a position to end the childhood chronic disease epidemic. He also said that through President Donald Trump, God gave him that opportunity. How can mainstream media reporters question the sincerity of his passion when he’s already moved the needle so much in the right direction?
Kennedy has likewise pushed for greater transparency within the federal public health bureaucracy. His HHS has taken steps to increase public access to data, reevaluate scientific advisory processes, and subject long-standing agency practices to additional scrutiny. All of this has helped in rebuilding public trust in health institutions that suffered significant credibility losses during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Americans can decide for themselves whether those reforms are succeeding. But one thing is already clear: the evidence suggests Kennedy has been hard at work. The same cannot be said for the reporters who ignored so much of that evidence in order to tell a more convenient story.
At the end of the day, Americans will judge Kennedy not by anonymous quotes from disgruntled former employees but by results. If treatments reach patients faster, healthcare costs fall, and public health outcomes improve, the accusations that he was somehow "checked out" will look less like journalism and more like partisan wish-casting.
Martha Boneta Fain is a political strategist and farmer known for the passage of a landmark right-to-farm law in the Commonwealth of Virginia.