Robert F. Kennedy Jr., nominated to lead HHS under President Donald Trump's second term, holds a range of positions on healthcare issues.
Here are five positions of RFK Jr:
1. Mr. Kennedy plans to prioritize addressing chronic disease. Chronic disease accounts for $1 trillion in annual U.S. health care costs, and Mr. Kennedy wants to address the chronic disease epidemic within two years.
Mr. Kennedy voiced his plan to treat chronic disease as a key priority before his nomination to lead HHS. "I'm going to urge President Trump on day one to do the same thing they did in COVID, which is to declare a national emergency, but not for infectious disease, but for chronic disease," Mr. Kennedy said in a Sept. 26 interview, about one month after he dropped out of the presidential race.
2. He may consider changing the Medicare physician fee schedule. Four anonymous sources told The Washington Post in November that Mr. Kennedy and his advisers are considering an overhaul of Medicare's payment formula.
CMS recently finalized a 2.83% cut to the physician payment schedule for 2025, which has been met with pushback by many physicians and medical societies. The Post reports the discussions about changing the fee schedule are in their early stages and could involve the review of thousands of billing codes that determine physician reimbursements. The change could represent an overall shift toward incentivizing primary care and prevention as opposed to specialty care.
3. He has touted controversial and heavily challenged claims about vaccine safety. Mr. Kennedy has been vocal about his suspicions of vaccines for nearly 20 years. In 2005, he published an article called "Deadly Immunity" in unusual venues for the topic: Rolling Stone magazine (print) and Salon (digital). The article claimed that thimerosal, eliminated in routine childhood vaccines in 2001, caused autism. The article has since been amended and corrected and was eventually retracted.
In a 2023 podcast interview, he said, "There's no vaccine that is safe and effective." The nonprofit Mr. Kennedy was aligned with for nearly a decade, Children's Health Defense, has been a vocal critic of COVID-19 vaccines and public health mandates, with its claims frequently challenged by public health experts.
4. He supports abortion rights up to the point of fetal viability. Mr. Kennedy has said that he believes abortion should be legal up until fetal viability, after which point he supports restrictions. He clarified this position in a June 2024 video, though he did not specifically quantify fetal viability.
Mr. Kennedy also introduced a plan during his run for president called "More Choices, More Life," that called for a subsidized daycare initiative aimed at creating more affordable and accessible childcare options for Americans. He tied this to a larger plan to decrease abortion rates by addressing the reasons financial and economic pressure that contribute people seeking abortions.
"And since economics is a major driver of abortion, this policy will do more to lower abortion rates than any coercive measure ever could," the website for the plan states.
5. He has vocalized interest in redirecting Medicare spending toward primary care, behavioral health and preventive care over certain pharmaceuticals. He has been an opponent of Medicare and Medicaid funding for GLP-1 drugs used for weight loss and has argued that CMS funding should be used towards covering gym memberships and healthier food options for beneficiaries.
"For half the price of Ozempic, we could purchase regeneratively raised, organic food for every American, three meals a day and a gym membership, for every obese American," Mr. Kennedy said during a Congressional roundtable in September, as reported by the Associated Press.