April 14, 2025 - Epoch Times
06:29
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| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| Having the ability to have different vantage points come in and structure government is so crucial at a time where government's just been living on its laurels. | |
| It's, you know, before Obama, it was, you know, plus 3%. | |
| Doesn't matter which administration you're in. | |
| Every year, it's, you know, the agency would get the same amount of money, plus 3%. | |
| We're excited about it. | |
| We can continue on. | |
| When Obama got here, we had obviously the Affordable Care Act, which represented a significant increase in expenditures to the health economy. | |
| And then we had President Trump come in, create some efficiency around that. | |
| And then you had President Biden come in and then just blow it out of the water again. | |
| And so right now, you have a reset that would be normal in any normal corporate business. | |
| We all don't like to talk about that because we hold the public employee different than your corporate employee, because that's how we've been trained here in the United States, is that public service is a great calling, and it is a great calling, but it doesn't mean that our governmental entities shouldn't be treated in similar ways. | |
| Every now and then to reset them to make sure that they align with both the president's agenda but to better health outcomes. | |
| How can you argue that this arcane system where we have 80,000 plus employees and 150,000 contractors and are spending trillions of dollars yet receiving some of the worst health outcomes is what's best for the American public? | |
| I can't make that argument. | |
| I'm really interested to see how the Democrats are going to try and make that argument over the next coming months. | |
| In Trump 1.0, as you call it, most people weren't aware that something like Maha existed. | |
| It existed kind of in a more hidden way. | |
| All these people that were into... | |
| Different ways of approaching health than the sort of standard allopathic model, I suppose, and millions of them. | |
| I didn't even really know how big this was, even though at Epoch Times we've been sort of servicing that sector for quite some time. | |
| It's not necessarily obvious that MAGA and MAHA would have such a common interest. | |
| So it's interesting because I've had the pleasure of getting to know... | |
| Folks in this second round, you know, whether working on transition or just talking to folks about what to expect when they get to the Department of Health. | |
| Because as the operations guy, I can't tell you what policy you want to focus on, but I can tell you, okay, look for this, this, and this when you want to try and start doing things. | |
| And so what I have found is an incredible synergy between folks that were in the first administration who are now there and the incoming Maha team. | |
| And to me, you need that pragmatism that comes with we've been here, we've been through the grind, we know how to do this, with the idealism of this is our first time here, this is our biggest shot, and we're going to go above and beyond to make sure that we make impact. | |
| And so to me, you have two factions, but they are very strong together. | |
| In ways that they wouldn't be strong if they were solely a part. | |
| And I can go into a lot about the internal management dynamics, but... | |
| Right now, what I know is that the office of the secretary has some incredible leadership in it, ranging from Heather Flick, who was the former general counsel and assistant secretary for administration, who serves as Bobby's chief of staff, to the new incoming team that has the trust and relationships with Bobby. | |
| And so to me, having that, there's going to be some hiccups, like there is with every administration, and there will be some difficulties, but... | |
| They are perfectly positioned. | |
| They did a once-in-a-lifetime reorganization of the largest federal department in 60 days. | |
| You cannot tell me that the synergy inside is not working greatly. | |
| Because there's no way they would have been able to pull that off in that amount of time. | |
| 100%, right? | |
| That's clear. | |
| But it's not necessarily obvious that that would be the case. | |
| This is, I guess, what I'm getting at. | |
| Is it obvious to you? | |
| No. Because they're actually different agendas. | |
| The MAGA agenda and the MAHA agenda don't necessarily mesh on a lot of issues. | |
| MAGA and Trump 1.0, health care economy. | |
| The economics of healthcare. | |
| Maha's really public health focused. | |
| So to me, they are complementary of each other. | |
| And as long as they don't start to try and drive each other's business, they're going to have a lot of paths to success. | |
| Because the Maha team sees, okay, here are the public health indicators. | |
| You know, we're feeding... | |
| Folks, terrible stuff starting from childhood. | |
| We have obesity problems. | |
| We have diabetes problems. | |
| We have all these chronic disease problems. | |
| That's a public health argument. | |
| The health economy argument is, why are we paying so much for all of these things, and how do we merge them all together? | |
| So you have a Secretary Kennedy who's going to be very prevention-focused, which saves taxpayer money, because if we can prevent you from getting said disease, then we save Medicare and Medicaid on that type of payment at the end of the day. | |
| And you have the Trump 1.0 team who's really going to be focused on making sure that America... | |
| Americans have access to health in rural America, mental health and addiction treatments, and other things. | |
| So to me, the synergies are incredible, and it's really getting them to be collaborative in this process, which we've seen because, again, reorganizing the department of that level in two months. | |
| Astronomically difficult. | |
| And they're not going to get credit for it, but I want to just let everyone know that that's the first step. | |
| I'm going to expect by the end of this four years, we're going to see better health outcomes in a number of topics, ranging from addiction to mental health to obesity. | |
| Those are going to be core tenets of a Secretary Kennedy administration. |
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