Newly sworn-in Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said during a Fox News interview on Thursday that the U.S. is “the sickest” country on the planet and that he plans to be the “disrupter” the nation’s healthcare system sorely needs in order to “Make America Healthy Again.”
“We are 4.2 percent of the world’s population, we buy 70 percent of the pharmaceutical drugs on earth,” he told host Laura Ingraham. “We spend two-to-three times what other countries spend for healthcare and we have the worst health outcomes.
“We literally have the sickest population in the world. Those are the people that got us there,” he continued, referencing the nation’s big pharmaceutical companies. “We do need a break. We need somebody different who can come in and say, ‘I’m a disrupter.’ I’m not gonna let the food industry and the pharmaceutical industry run health policy anymore.”
In an email announcing his confirmation by the full Senate earlier Thursday, Kennedy’s team wrote, “The future of public health is about to change forever. This is a turning point for our nation. With RFK Jr. at the helm, the battle for accountability and real health reform is just getting started.”
Also Thursday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order creating the Make America Healthy Again Commission, which will be led by Kennedy,