This article originally appeared on vigilantfox.com and was republished with permission.
RFK Jr. just walked into Congress and set the place on fire.
They were not ready for this.
Rep. Dingell thought she had Kennedy cornered on drug prices—then he dismantled her argument in one fell swoop.
But the real firestorm came when he called out the one Democrat Rep. who took more Big Pharma money than anyone else on the committee.
Before you can fix a broken system, you have to acknowledge just how broken it really is.
That was the message from HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as he opened his testimony before Congress with a sobering diagnosis of America’s healthcare crisis.
“The United States remains the SICKEST developed nation,” he said. “And yet we spend $4.5 trillion annually on healthcare, 2 to 3 times more per capita than comparable nations.”
Kennedy didn’t just point to waste; he warned that the entire system is becoming unsustainable. Healthcare costs are rising faster than the economy, while health outcomes keep sliding. Americans are paying more than ever, and getting sicker in return.
“If we don’t stanch this trend, we will ransom our children to bankruptcy, servitude, and disastrous health consequences.”
More money isn’t the answer, Kennedy argued. It’s about how we spend it. “We won’t solve this problem by throwing more money at it,” he added. “We must spend smarter.”
That means cutting the bureaucracy, fixing misaligned incentives, and making sure dollars actually go toward improving health, not just managing disease.
That’s when Kennedy unveiled his historic 7-part budget proposal, a sweeping reform plan designed to flip the healthcare system on its head.
1. Tackle mental health and addiction head-on: “These issues now rival chronic diseases in their impact… HHS will aggressively combat the opioid crisis, especially the spread of synthetic drugs like fentanyl.”
2. Prioritize nutrition and healthy lifestyles: “The president’s budget requests $94 billion in discretionary funds to support these priorities, including the Administration for a Healthy America.”
3. Clean up the U.S. food system: “We will equip FDA to remove harmful chemicals from food and packaging and close the GRAS (‘generally recognized as safe’) loophole.”
4. Refocus NIH and CDC research priorities: “We’ll end gain-of-function experiments and eliminate funding for research based on radical gender ideology. At the CDC, we’re returning to core missions—tracking diseases, investigating outbreaks, and cutting waste.”
5. Eliminate DEI funding and fight real poverty: “We will move beyond lip service to communities of color and take meaningful action to address their needs.”
6. Modernize cybersecurity and health IT: “The AI revolution has arrived… We’re using it to manage healthcare data securely and speed up drug approvals.”
7. Rebuild public trust: “Trust that eroded through years of industry capture, waste, and misplaced priorities.”
“We will launch a new era of transparency in public service, creating an honest, science-driven HHS that answers to the president, to Congress, and the American people.”
Kennedy’s plan drew immediate pushback. Not everyone on the committee welcomed his proposals, and some raised concerns about how they might affect current agency staff.
Rep. Diana DeGette focused on a letter signed by NIH scientists who questioned Kennedy’s leadership. She pressed him to commit that no disciplinary action would be taken against them. “It should be an easy answer because it’s illegal,” she said.
Kennedy responded that his goal was to restore scientific independence. HHS, he said, would “commit that we are absolutely depoliticizing science at NIH for the first time.”
He also pointed to what he called Biden-era politicization of science, saying, “The Biden administration….Ms. Chairwoman, the Biden administration politicized the science and I just gave you three of thousands of examples of how they did that.”
When asked directly about the letter, Kennedy said it was the first he’d heard of it.
Then Rep. Frank Pallone jumped in, clearly agitated by Kennedy’s position on vaccines. He accused the secretary of shutting the public out of vaccine policy decisions.
“You’ve made a number of major decisions about vaccines,” he said. “There’s been no public comment process. No accountability.”
He followed with a pointed outburst: “What are you afraid of?! Are you just afraid of receiving public comments on proposals?!”
Kennedy responded calmly. “We have a public process for regulating vaccines. It’s called the ACIP committee—and it’s a public committee.”
Pallone pushed back, raising his voice. “You fired the committee! You fired the ACIP!”
“I fired people who had conflicts with the pharmaceutical industry,” he said confidently.
Then he added, “That committee has been a template for medical malpractice for 30 years.”
Pallone struggled to respond. “I… I… look, I, I… I can’t…”
The exchange left the contrast between them unmistakably clear.
Kennedy turned the spotlight back on Rep. Frank Pallone, triggering a tense exchange that drew a sharp reaction from Democrats on the committee.
“If I can take a minute to respond to something that Congressman Pallone said…” Kennedy began, referencing a conversation they had 15 years earlier. At the time, Kennedy recalled, Pallone had been one of the most outspoken advocates in Congress for families impacted by vaccine injury.
“You were very adamant about it,” Kennedy said. “You were the leading member of Congress on that issue.”
Then came the moment that shifted the tone of the hearing. Kennedy stated that since that time, Pallone had accepted $2 million in campaign contributions from pharmaceutical companies—“more than any other member of this committee.”
He didn’t level a personal accusation, but made the implication clear. “And your enthusiasm for supporting the old ACIP committee, which was completely rife and pervasive with pharmaceutical conflicts, seems to be an outcome of those contributions.”
Democrats quickly moved to interrupt. Committee Chairman Buddy Carter called for order and urged Kennedy to retract the comment. Kennedy complied, saying simply, “They’re retracted.”
But the moment lingered. The tension in the room signaled that the impact had already been made.
As the hearing resumed, Rep. Debbie Dingell shifted the focus to prescription drug prices and pressed Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on his policy stance. She framed her question as a defense of recent Democratic initiatives, highlighting the Inflation Reduction Act and the creation of the Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program.
“Do you support the drug price negotiation program,” she asked, “and commit to using the tools and authorities provided to you under the law, to drive down prescription drug costs for the American?”
Kennedy didn’t take the bait. Instead, he outlined a broader strategy shaped by President Trump’s directive to challenge longstanding pricing norms. The goal, he explained, was not to tinker around the edges—but to transform the system entirely.
“We’re using every tool that’s given to us,” he said, “and President Trump has ordered me to do something that no other president has, which is to establish across-the-board Most Favored Nations, so that we’re not paying more than Europeans are.”
He added that negotiations with pharmaceutical companies were already underway. “We’re going to be able to lower drug prices during this administration—more than any administration in history.”
For Kennedy, the issue wasn’t about partisan loyalty. It was about delivering measurable, lasting results, and he made that distinction clear.
Then came a topic few in Washington want to revisit: the more than 340,000 unaccompanied migrant children lost during the Biden administration.
For many in the room, it was an uncomfortable shift, but the details were impossible to ignore.
Rep. Kat Cammack outlined how HHS failed to properly vet sponsors, while law enforcement agencies were denied access to key information. “These kids were sent to unsafe addresses, even non-existent ones,” she said. “They were exposed to trafficking and exploitation.”
Kennedy didn’t deflect. He acknowledged what went wrong and explained how the system broke down. “They were emphasizing speed over security,” he said. “There were political reasons for that. They wanted the optics of empty detention centers.”
He went on to describe how traffickers exploited the chaos, arriving with fake IDs, picking up multiple children at once, and delivering them to parking lots, strip clubs, and shipping containers. “One person got 42 kids to one address,” Kennedy said.
Under his leadership, he told the committee that it wouldn’t happen again. HHS now requires DNA testing, ID checks, income verification, and full background screening for every sponsor—no exceptions.
It’s a quiet but striking example of what accountability looks like when no one’s watching.
Finally, Rep. John James brought the conversation back to the big picture. He asked how the government could dismantle the perverse incentives that reward treating disease rather than preventing it, where every major player profits from Americans staying sick.
“At every level of the system… it’s just a bundle of perverse incentives,” Kennedy responded, “that basically put every actor in the system—pharmaceutical companies, providers, hospitals and insurance companies—in an advantageous position to increase the number of sick Americans.”
The way forward, he explained, is to realign incentives around results. “We want outcome-based medical care. We want value-based medical care,” Kennedy said.
He told the committee that HHS is already working through the Center for Medical Intervention to pilot new programs that prioritize health outcomes. The plan is to scale them system-wide.
Kennedy added that he’s in active talks with the nation’s leading insurers. “They want to do it too,” he said.
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