| The Make America Healthy Again movement has spent the last several years arguing that America’s health system is sick. But after Tuesday’s MAHA Summit, it’s getting harder to say exactly what the movement thinks the cure should look like. At a gathering featuring Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Vice President JD Vance and top administration health officials, the agenda included topics such as artificial intelligence, bolstering access to health data, psychedelic drugs, peptide therapies, food supply innovation and longevity science. It also featured heavy hitters from the hospital and insurance industries, both of which have been criticized for their role in making health care more expensive. Alex Hardy, the CEO of MAHA Holdings, acknowledged the wide array of themes at the start of the day, telling audience members to “treat today’s program like your favorite seed oil-free buffet: Pick a couple things that appeal to you because you can’t go wrong.” If they wanted to come back for seconds or thirds, Hardy reminded the ballroom at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in Washington, it would be available online. The common thread was supposed to be prevention and consumer empowerment as a way of tackling disease. But the details revealed a movement pulling in several directions at once. Corporate sponsors at the summit were more visible and high-profile than at last year’s inaugural MAHA event, which has prompted criticism from some Kennedy allies, but it also signals a new era for the movement. More on that below. Hardy said the conference wouldn’t have happened without Grail, a key sponsor of the event and the maker of a multi-cancer detection test that costs nearly $1,000. The company is currently seeking approval from the Food and Drug Administration, which would expand the company’s reach by unlocking Medicare coverage of the tests. The day brought government officials face to face with executives from UnitedHealthcare, Sutter Health, Walmart, ResMed, Oura, Hims & Hers and Anthropic, among others, and featured just as much networking as discussion. Catherine Gaffigan, an executive at Elevance Health, used the summit to announce new billing policies targeting higher hospital payments for certain services provided at hospital-owned clinics, a shift hospitals have vigorously opposed. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has been pushing similar payment reforms in Medicare as part of its annual regulatory updates. Gaffigan made the announcement during an “Affordability First” panel moderated by Alec Aramanda, a senior CMS official, which also featured executives from UnitedHealth Group and industry trade association AHIP. Participants in other panels work for telehealth platforms seeking to capitalize on the administration’s loosening of restrictions on peptides, psychedelics companies working toward FDA approval of their products and artificial intelligence companies pushing broader use of platforms to analyze health data — among other businesses looking to tap into the MAHA agenda. “It’s not just symptom relief,” said Kabir Nath, the CEO of Compass Pathways, which is developing a synthetic psilocybin medication for treatment-resistant depression. “Yet what people will tell you is that actually they can imagine getting their lives back. Nobody on an SSRI tells you that they got their life back.” Matt Zorn, the deputy general counsel at the Department of Health and Human Services who was moderating the panel, replied, “Amazing.” When asked about a potential concern about favoritism of specific products or sectors, a spokesperson for the department said that “brief acknowledgments made while moderating should not be interpreted as statements of agency policy or support for a speaker’s views.” “HHS and the participating department officials did not plan or sponsor the MAHA Summit,” the spokesperson said. “HHS and CMS policy, coverage and regulatory decisions are made through established processes grounded in applicable law, scientific evidence, and relevant standards.” → There’s been a lot of ink spilled about the corporate sponsorships — including reporting from Bloomberg that the highest-level sponsorships were pitched at $300,000, giving companies a speaking slot and a private dinner with top health officials. While this has created some tensions within the movement critical of the corporate influence, some view it as a sign that MAHA is becoming more mainstream. “It’s really promising that the people who matter are feeling more and more compelled to be a part of this and support this,” said a person who has been involved with the MAHA movement, and who was granted anonymity to discuss the dynamics. “In the past those kinds of players see the political cycles and they think they can wait out presidents or secretaries or whoever. But it’s really interesting and inspiring that they’re deciding to engage and be a part of the solution,” the person added. “I think that sends a really strong signal for the future. I don’t think this is a short-term thing.” Tony Lyons, president of the advocacy group MAHA Action, indirectly addressed the corporate attendance during a kickoff speech at the summit. “The chronic disease epidemic is humanity’s greatest threat, and defeating this enemy will require all of us from the grass roots to the boardroom,” said Lyons, who also runs Skyhorse Publishing, which has published several of Kennedy’s books. “Along that road to victory, we’ll naturally differ in opinion because a healthy system always has some tension to it. But focusing on our differences leads to infighting, and infighting distracts us from the real enemy.” Why it matters: The MAHA movement has moved from an outsider critique of American health care to a movement with a seat at the table. Supporters touted it as representative of a victory that thrusts once-neglected health issues into action — and the language surrounding it into the lexicon. → The next test is whether that sprawling coalition can translate the language around prevention and consumer control into durable policy changes — and whether it can do so without losing the cadre of advocates who helped build the movement in the first place. But also: MAHA’s ideas may be starting to travel beyond the core MAHA crowd itself. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democrat running in a highly competitive Senate race in Michigan, rolled out a policy agenda centered on limiting the use of pesticides, reducing substances known as “forever chemicals” in drinking water, increasing access to healthier foods and reining in health care consolidation. While El-Sayed, a public health official, doesn’t agree with MAHA on the issue of vaccine policy changes, there are other goals he says can be fertile for common ground. “When it comes to the broader goal of keeping kids safe, when it comes to the slop that they’re being fed by big food corporations and the pesticides that are being forced into our food environment by Big Ag, when it comes to addressing corporate consolidation, when it comes to standing up to pharma, I think there’s a lot that we agree on there,” he told my WaPo colleague Rachel Roubein. → ICYMI, read her latest story on this topic: “This Senate Democratic candidate is making a play for RFK Jr.’s MAHA supporters.” Polling shows that about 40 percent of Americans identify with the MAHA movement, which The Post has also reported. Kennedy’s MAHA agenda has been credited with helping Trump appeal to independents and Democratic voters in the 2024 election that sent him back to the White House. But there’s room for other candidates to step in ahead of the midterms. A KFF/AP survey of rural registered voters released last week found that just 17 percent said the Trump administration’s health care policies have had a positive impact on their health care costs. Almost all rural voters — 90 percent — said it is very or extremely important for candidates to talk about health care costs. 68 percent That’s the proportion of Americans who do not believe that childhood vaccines cause autism, according to a poll from the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center. My colleague Daniel Wu in The Post’s newsroom has a story with the details, including that the percentage of Americans with that sentiment has remained statistically unchanged since 2022. The poll comes as Trump has questioned the safety of the combination measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine, and said he wants to split up many sets of vaccines that kids get. “The vaccine size will be much, much less, and I think you’re going to see a massive reduction in autism, and that’s a big deal,” Trump said during an Oval Office briefing on drug prices earlier this month. The poll, released Tuesday, found that 68 percent of respondents said it is false that “vaccines given to children for diseases like measles, mumps, and rubella cause autism,” while 13 percent said the statement is true and 19 percent are not sure. Nearly a quarter (23 percent) of Americans who participated in the poll said they viewed Kennedy favorably, and 40 percent were sure of Kennedy’s position on vaccinating children against measles. Read the full story: “Most Americans do not believe childhood vaccines cause autism, poll finds.” The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP) on Wednesday advanced three Trump administration health nominees, clearing the way for eventual Senate floor votes — but none is expected to get a confirmation vote before the November midterms. The committee voted 12-11 to advance Nicole Saphier, Trump’s nominee for surgeon general. Saphier, a radiologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering and former Fox News contributor, is the administration’s third nominee for the post after Casey Means and Janette Nesheiwat failed to win confirmation. At her September hearing, Saphier said vaccines do not cause autism and defended the combination MMR vaccine, following Trump’s public questioning of the vaccine’s safety. The panel also advanced Timothy Westlake to lead the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and Mary Lazare to serve as assistant secretary for aging. Why it matters: The votes move three key health department leadership posts closer to being filled, including a surgeon general position that has lacked a Senate-confirmed leader since Trump took office for his second term. “U.S. ends health aid to Zimbabwe after ‘America First’ deal is spurned,” reports The Post’s Adam Taylor. “The era of male birth control may be nearing,” Margaret Hetherman writes for The Post. “Immigrants with legal status at risk of being dropped from Medicaid,” Phil Galewitz, Andrew Jones and Claudia Boyd-Barrett report for KFF Health News.
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