One aspect of President-elect Donald Trump’s presidency that I am looking forward to is seeing how “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) plays out.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Trump’s nominee for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has yet to go through the confirmation process before the Senate, but his focus on chronic illness and disease and its connection to the way we eat and what is in our food, is already having effect. This week, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) banned Red Dye No. 3, a laboratory produced dye added to our foods, supplements and medicines for too many years.
Studies have discovered a potential link between the dye and cancer in lab animals; despite this potential risk, the FDA allowed it to remain in our nation’s food and medicine for decades. Now that a new sheriff is coming to town, the FDA appears to be doing damage control in advance.
While having the government ban everything is neither a goal I want to see established nor a permanent solution, the hope is that the federal arm, which is supposed to manage and work to improve Americans’ health outcomes, will begin looking at health care and health maintenance through a different lens; perhaps one that does not require excessive oversight and draconian overreach, but encourages Americans to take charge of their own health outcomes.
With the opposition to Kennedy’s nomination, I can already see how MAHA will experience challenges making inroads in certain states, Alabama being one of them.
A big hurdle is the many gatekeepers who limit or control access. One of these, according to the Alabama Policy Institute (API), is the Certificate of Needs (CON) Review Board. Created in 1979, it was supposed to address rising health care costs. Read any publication in or out of the state, and you can see that this board has failed.
The CON Board is in the business of usurpation and oppression, not allowing the citizens to enjoy their life. As such, it directly violates Article 1, Section 35 of the Alabama Constitution, which reads, “The sole object and only legitimate end of government is to protect the citizen's enjoyment of life, liberty, and property, and when the government assumes other functions it is usurpation and oppression.”
The board requires that any health provider who wants to initiate a new service or expand existing services, must demonstrate to the board that the costs of this expansion would be offset by actual demand, API explains:
This is often a costly and time consuming process that increases the health care costs for all patients and can delay access to essential care. Alabama is currently one of 35 states operating a CON program. The maximum Certificate of Need filing fee is currently $24,684, though costs can quickly increase depending on whether an application is approved or denied.
Because existing hospitals and health care providers have the power to oppose attempts to provide additional medical services, CON laws serve to limit competition and promote an anti-free-market environment in the health care space.
Now one understands why, in a state that is primarily rural, health care in these areas is either limited or stalled.
To be fair, the CON board did recently approve a new surgery center in Montgomery, as 1819 News reported, but Montgomery is the state capital and a city. Rural areas continue to suffer from lack of affordable and accessible health care options, and the gatekeepers at CON hinder any workable solutions to innovation and expansion that might resolve this problem. While bills to address this wend their way through the legislature, and CON does its slow and laborious work, citizens deal with less-than-optimum health solutions and outcomes, and some die as a result.
I wrote about this in November, noting that the drive to establish tax credits or expand Medicaid to shore up rural hospitals or expand them only deepens the already incestuous relationship between the state and corporate medicine, while failing to address the need to incorporate new paradigms, like mobile and alternative medicine.
Another Alabama issue that requires the MAHA focus is infant mortality and outcomes. Alabama has long been one of the worst in the nation in infant outcomes and infant mortality. But it has only been in the last five to 10 years that any work has been initiated to bypass the gynecological gatekeepers who limit and block this access. The practice of midwifery was not established in the state until 2018, but has shown a record of improving infant mortality and how well babies thrive.
In 2024, the Alabama Legislature had its first reading of House Bill 312 which seeks to improve laws and access that will increase the practice of midwifery.
MAHA throws a critical analysis into issues of health, particularly women’s health. People are not a sum of parts requiring individual treatment; they must be treated holistically for optimum results, reproductively and otherwise. Alabama’s removal of gatekeeper control could allow for health care and maintenance covering a range of modalities, not just the so-called approved ones.
I continue saying that making health care simple and accessible must go beyond hospitals, drugs and insurance access. This appears to be the prison in which Alabamians, and most Americans, are currently locked. If MAHA is able to do its work in Alabama and across the nation, many Americans will finally experience release from that prison, along with improved health.
Jennifer Oliver O'Connell, As the Girl Turns, is an investigative journalist, author, opinion analyst, and contributor to 1819 News, Redstate, and other publications. Jennifer writes on Politics and Pop Culture, with occasional detours into Reinvention, Yoga, and Food. You can read more about Jennifer's world at her As the Girl Turns website. You can also follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Telegram.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News. To comment, please send an email with your name and contact information to Commentary@1819news.com.
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