True Aim of ‘Make America Healthy Again’? Unconventional Therapies for the Rich, Diminished Health Services for the Poor

In a new term of the former president, the US's healthcare priorities have transformed into a populist movement called the health revival project. To date, its central figurehead, top health official Robert F Kennedy Jr, has terminated $500m of vaccine research, laid off thousands of government health employees and advocated an unsubstantiated link between acetaminophen and neurodivergence.

But what underlying vision ties the movement together?

Its fundamental claims are simple: the population suffer from a long-term illness surge fuelled by corrupt incentives in the medical, food and drug industries. However, what starts as a reasonable, even compelling critique about ethical failures rapidly turns into a skepticism of immunizations, public health bodies and conventional therapies.

What additionally distinguishes this movement from alternative public health efforts is its expansive cultural analysis: a conviction that the problems of contemporary life – its vaccines, processed items and environmental toxins – are symptoms of a moral deterioration that must be addressed with a preventive right-leaning habits. The movement's clean anti-establishment message has gone on to attract a varied alliance of worried parents, lifestyle experts, alternative thinkers, culture warriors, health food CEOs, conservative social critics and non-conventional therapists.

The Creators Behind the Campaign

One of the movement’s primary developers is Calley Means, existing federal worker at the HHS and personal counsel to the health secretary. A trusted companion of RFK Jr's, he was the visionary who initially linked the health figure to Trump after recognising a strategic alignment in their grassroots rhetoric. The adviser's own entry into politics occurred in 2024, when he and his sister, Casey Means, co-authored the popular wellness guide Good Energy and marketed it to right-leaning audiences on a political talk show and a popular podcast. Together, the brother and sister created and disseminated the initiative's ideology to countless rightwing listeners.

The siblings link their activities with a intentionally shaped personal history: Calley narrates accounts of ethical breaches from his previous role as an advocate for the agribusiness and pharma. The sister, a Stanford-trained physician, left the clinical practice feeling disillusioned with its revenue-focused and narrowly focused medical methodology. They promote their previous establishment role as evidence of their anti-elite legitimacy, a approach so powerful that it earned them insider positions in the Trump administration: as stated before, Calley as an adviser at the federal health agency and the sister as Trump’s nominee for the nation's top doctor. They are likely to emerge as major players in the nation's medical system.

Debatable Credentials

Yet if you, according to movement supporters, “do your own research”, research reveals that journalistic sources disclosed that the HHS adviser has failed to sign up as a advocate in the US and that former employers dispute him actually serving for corporate interests. In response, the official said: “I stand by everything I’ve said.” Simultaneously, in other publications, Casey’s past coworkers have suggested that her exit from clinical practice was driven primarily by burnout than disillusionment. But perhaps embellishing personal history is just one aspect of the growing pains of building a new political movement. Thus, what do these recent entrants provide in terms of tangible proposals?

Policy Vision

During public appearances, the adviser often repeats a rhetorical question: how can we justify to work to increase treatment availability if we understand that the model is dysfunctional? Alternatively, he asserts, the public should concentrate on holistic “root causes” of ill health, which is the reason he launched Truemed, a service integrating tax-free health savings account holders with a platform of wellness products. Explore Truemed’s website and his intended audience becomes clear: Americans who shop for $1,000 cold plunge baths, luxury personal saunas and premium exercise equipment.

According to the adviser frankly outlined in a broadcast, his company's main aim is to redirect every cent of the enormous sum the US spends on programmes funding treatment of disadvantaged and aged populations into savings plans for individuals to allocate personally on mainstream and wellness medicine. The wellness sector is hardly a fringe cottage industry – it constitutes a massive worldwide wellness market, a vaguely described and mostly unsupervised industry of companies and promoters marketing a comprehensive wellness. Means is heavily involved in the wellness industry’s flourishing. His sister, similarly has involvement with the wellness industry, where she started with a successful publication and podcast that became a multi-million-dollar health wearables startup, the business.

The Initiative's Commercial Agenda

Serving as representatives of the Maha cause, Calley and Casey are not merely using their new national platform to advance their commercial interests. They are converting the movement into the market's growth strategy. Currently, the Trump administration is executing aspects. The newly enacted policy package contains measures to increase flexible spending options, directly benefitting Calley, Truemed and the market at the government funding. More consequential are the package's significant decreases in healthcare funding, which not just slashes coverage for low-income seniors, but also strips funding from remote clinics, local healthcare facilities and assisted living centers.

Contradictions and Consequences

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