RFK Jr. Would Put the Economy at Risk, Too

President-elect Donald Trump’s announcement of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as his choice to be secretary of Health and Human Services has provoked a lot of objections, many of them explaining how he would be a danger to both scientific progress and public health. But too little has been said about the economic damage he could do as leader of one of the most significant branches of the administrative state.

Spending on health care constitutes more than 17% of the US economy. The HHS secretary oversees reimbursement rates for Medicare, which accounts for about 14% of the entire federal budget. How much a hospital or doctor receives for a medical procedure depends on what the HHS decides. That in turn shapes the incentives in the health-care system — whether a hospital can afford to offer a given procedure, for instance, or which procedures would most increase hospital profits.

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