“Insulting,” “Disastrous,” "Bonkers," “Promoted Misinformation” : Reviews Are In On RFK Jr.’s Resignation-Worthy Hearings Performance

Public Health Watch Newsletter

As Protect Our Care painfully documented, throughout Trump health secretary RFK Jr’s Congressional hearing blitz this month, he lied, and lied, and then doubled down on those lies again, and again. Kennedy clearly hoped repeating deceptions and denials of his harmful, anti-science record often enough would make them true. But that ‘Who me?’-strategy clearly fell flat with many in the media and the disability community:

Associated Press: FACT FOCUS: RFK Jr. misleads on Medicaid cuts: CLAIM: “There are no cuts to Medicaid,” Kennedy said. “We are increasing Medicaid spending by 47% over the next 10 years. Increasing spending by 47%. How is that a cut? That is only a cut in Washington, D.C.” // THE FACTS: Medicaid analysts say Kennedy’s explanation is inaccurate political spin, and say an inevitable increase in spending due to factors like a changing population and rising health costs doesn’t negate that there was a funding cut. To help partly offset lost revenue from sweeping tax cuts and new spending, Trump’s law last year enacted significant reforms to Medicaid, including new work requirements and eligibility changes, that are expected to cut the health care safety net program’s spending by nearly $1 trillion over a decade.
New York Times: RFK Jr. Defends Trump’s Mathematically Impossible Drug Discount Claims: “If you have a $600 drug, and you reduce it to $10, that’s a 600 percent reduction,” Mr. Kennedy said during a congressional hearing. Mr. Kennedy is mathematically incorrect. A price reduction from $600 to $10 would be a discount of more than 98 percent. A price discount cannot be more than 100 percent, because that would lower the price to zero — or suggest that the company was giving you money for buying the product.
Associated Press: FACT CHECK: ‘RFK Jr. says the US is limiting measles outbreaks better than the rest of the world’ : [The] U.S. is getting worse, not better, at protecting people against the spread of measles, because vaccination rates have been falling. And public health experts have been critical of Kennedy’s response to the rise in measles cases because, instead of forcefully advocating for more vaccinations, he has been reluctant to promote them, cast doubt on their safety and promoted other, untested remedies.
NBC News: RFK Jr. draws backlash for ripping Medicaid programs that pay people to care for relatives: During testimony, [RFK Jr.] criticized Medicaid-funded programs that pay relatives to serve as caregivers, alleging they compensate people for tasks they “used to do as family members for free. […] Video of the remarks quickly spread across social media, drawing a wave of angry responses from caregivers and disability rights advocates who said Kennedy trivialized the reality of caring for medically complex loved ones while conflating legitimate caregiving with illegal activity. // “That’s insulting,” said Kim Musheno, senior director of Medicaid policy at The Arc of the United States, a national disability rights organization. “It’s insulting to the families, and it’s insulting to the work that direct support professionals do for people.
Ars Technica: Bonkers: RFK Jr.’s rejection of germ theory debunked in Senate hearing: In a Congressional hearing on Wednesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) directly confronted anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on his rejection of germ theory—the unquestionable scientific idea that specific pathogenic microbes cause specific diseases. After Kennedy defended his fringe view, Senator Bill Cassidy fact-checked and debunked Kennedy’s denialist arguments in real time.
HuffPost: RFK Jr. Refuses To Say If He Takes ‘Any Responsibility’ for Measles Crisis: Kennedy, who has spent decades spreading disinformation about the safety of vaccines, has been testifying to Congress for the past two days about President Donald Trump’s 2027 budget request. During that time, he repeatedly scoffed at the idea that he deserved any blame for the measles outbreaks that spread on his watch. … Thousands of Americans have contracted measles on Kennedy’s watch, the overwhelming majority of whom were unvaccinated. Even as the outbreak spread, the HHS secretary continued to mislead people and downplay the seriousness of the virus.
Forbes: RFK Jr. Claims He Never Said Black Children Should Be ‘Re-Parented’ (He Did): [RFK Jr.] said Thursday he’s unfamiliar with the term “re-parent” and doubts he ever used it during testimony before Congress, despite using the term during a 2024 podcast interview, when he said “every Black” child need to be “re-parented.”
Talking Points Memo: “There’s no cut in Medicaid,” [RFK Jr] yelled numerous times over the past couple days as he testified in front of a handful of different congressional committees. That line, and his refusal to acknowledge the historic Medicaid cuts Republicans enacted in last year’s reconciliation bill — dubbed the One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) — was one of the few things that stayed consistent over the hours and hours of testimony he gave on Capitol Hill this week. [..] Despite the spin Kennedy spun during congressional testimony — and Republicans’ purposefully misleading statements on Medicaid cuts in recent weeks — the devastating cuts to the social safety net program enacted in the OBBBA are very real and have serious consequences for everyday Americans who rely on the health care program.
The Guardian: Kennedy also promoted misinformation within the hearing itself. Judy Chu, a Democrat from California, said it was “incredibly harmful” for the administration to stop universally recommending the hepatitis B vaccine at birth. […] “Babies are not at risk unless – essentially at zero risk – unless their mother is infected. For all mothers are tested when they go into the hospital to have a baby,” Kennedy said. But as many as 500,000 pregnant patients (about 14%) are never tested in pregnancy for hepatitis B, and the test also has a high rate of false negatives. Babies may also get sick from caregivers, since hepatitis B is highly contagious and can persist on items such as nail clippers, for a week. Kennedy also claimed, incorrectly, that the hepatitis B vaccine has not been studied properly and that “we don’t know what the risk profile is” despite decades of research on the safety and effectiveness of the widely distributed shots.
PBS: “It has nothing to do with me,” Kennedy said Tuesday of the uptick in measles across the country over the past year. […] Kennedy, who spent years as an anti-vaccine crusader before entering politics and in 2021 said he urged people to “resist” CDC guidelines on when kids should get vaccines, disputed accusations that he is anti-vaccine, saying he is “pro-science.”
Daily Beast: Jimmy Kimmel Sounds Alarm After Disastrous RFK Jr. Hearing: Sen. Elizabeth Warren questioned him about TrumpRx, the Trump administration’s drug discount site. “He claims that TrumpRx has reduced prices by as much as 600 percent,” Warren said about the president. “Six hundred percent, which I think means companies should be paying you to take their drugs.” // Kennedy responded, “President Trump has a different way of calculating. … If you have a $600 drug and you reduce it to 10, that’s a 600 percent reduction.“ // Kimmel roasted Kennedy’s explanation in his monologue on Wednesday, joking, “Who are you going to believe, [Trump] or math? Have you ever bankrupted a casino? I don’t think so.” … “The actual math is 98 percent, not 600 percent, but let’s not get caught up in semantics.”

Ouch. As Kayla Hancock, Director of Protect Our Care’s Public Health Project stressed, Kenney’s lie-centric performance underscored the urgent need for his resignation: “America’s Health Secretary must be trustworthy and guided by peer-reviewed science — not conspiracies and grifter influencers — because lives depend on it. Again and again Kennedy denied his clear and horrific record, confirming he is not capable or willing to be an honest broker of health information, only a super spreader of dangerous science-denialism that has sowed confusion, throttled vaccination rates, spiked health costs, and opened the floodgate for preventable disease. The sooner RFK Jr. is stripped of his power at HHS, the healthier Americans will be, particularly children who have suffered most from his vaccine smear and obstruction campaign.”

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