LAS VEGAS — A top aide for HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. made waves at the HLTH conference when he accused players across the healthcare industry of capitalizing off of chronic illnesses and turning a blind eye to potential root causes of the conditions, like diet.
“The problem is that most people in this room are just predominantly making money off more sick patients. And that’s just an economic fact,” Calley Means, an influential advisor to Kennedy, said.
Means spoke on a panel Tuesday about the Make America Healthy Again movement, which centers around reducing chronic disease by reforming food, health and science systems. A groundswell of public support for MAHA helped usher President Donald Trump into office, and the president created a MAHA Commission through an executive order in February.
Many in the healthcare industry support the overarching goal of MAHA: to make Americans, especially children, healthier. But there are significant concerns about the movement, especially its promotion of fad or otherwise dangerous dietary choices like drinking raw milk and the disproven idea that vaccines cause autism.
MAHA adherents also believe that the healthcare industry intentionally ignores the role of lifestyle factors in causing disease, because acknowledging the link would hurt company profits — Means’ core thesis at HLTH.
Healthcare stakeholders argue that’s not the case, pointing to investments in social determinants of health programs such as food-as-medicine, along with broader efforts to pivot away from fee-for-service payment systems.
The HLTH conference featured 39 sessions on preventive care and 114 sponsors that offer products related to preventive services, according to tallies from a conference spokesperson.
But “the pharma industry does not make more money when less people are sick. Hospitals don’t make more money when beds are less full. Insurance companies, as we all know, make more money when premiums go up and patients get sicker,” Means said.
The comments, and Means’ apparent venom toward the healthcare industry, sparked alarm among some panel attendees.
One physician in attendance said that Means’ words reflected a lack of understanding about the industry, since insurers actually have higher profits when their members are healthy.
Another emergency medicine physician, Dr. Joshua Guttman, said that Means’ belief that healthcare companies prioritize profits over patient wellbeing is at odds with why doctors choose to practice medicine.
“I have vested interest, and all physicians have a vested interest, in keeping people healthy. That’s our job. That’s what we go into medicine,” Guttman said. “We really, truly want the best for the person in front of us, and that’s keeping them from getting sick in the first place.”
Means, a former lobbyist and entrepreneur, has publicly railed about corporate influence in healthcare numerous times since being named special advisor to Kennedy.
He has previously accused the American Medical Association of being “a pharma lobbying group,” and also dubbed the Food and Drug Administration “a sock puppet of industry.”
Means also was a key architect in the administration’s MAHA reports on child chronic disease, which slam the “overmedicalization” of children and stump for a review of those who contribute to overprescribing.
On Tuesday, Means similarly called for intense scrutiny of major medical organizations that use evidence-based research to craft recommendations for patient care, saying the groups had been too focused on managing disease and not focused enough on prevention.
“Where [the MAHA] movement is going is an examination of standards of care,” Means said. “It is going to a very harsh examination of what the American Academy of Pediatrics has been advising patients… [and what] the American Heart Association [has] advised.”
The lobbyist also said he’d heard “panel after panel complaining” about insufficient government reimbursement for services, and how the situation could worsen from the $1 trillion cuts to Medicaid in the GOP’s tax and policy law passed this summer.
He had no sympathy.
“There’s a mass discussion that needs to happen about actually our prioritizations as a country [when] we spend 6% of our national income on food, but 23% of our national income is going to companies in this room,” Means said.
It’s not immediately clear what statistics Means was citing. A New York Times analysis of government data published in June found similar numbers about household spending, not national income.
