Do Americans trust Republicans or Democrats more when it comes to healthcare? If you go strictly based on one poll from YouGov taken in May 2025, 43% of Americans stated that they trust the Democratic Party on issues of healthcare, compared to the 26% of the public who trust Republicans on the matter.
These stats are intriguing, especially with President Donald Trump, a Republican, currently sitting in the Oval Office. However, Trump brings a few wild cards, relating to healthcare, into the mix that could change these figures for Republicans. The first of these wild cards being: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK Jr.).
Kennedy was a lifelong Democrat prior to his departure from the party in 2023, and is also a member of the well-established Kennedy dynasty. This, combined with his role as United States Department of Health and Human Services secretary under Trump, has put him in an interesting position that now allows him to enact calculated decisions on the United States’ policies relating to health.
How exactly Kennedy is able to do so is both because he now wields a central position that is detailed to safeguard the health of Americans, but also a policy that he is overseeing and the second wild card of the Trump approach to healthcare: Make America Healthy Again (MAHA).
However, what is MAHA?
Make America Healthy Again is a presidential commission that was formed through Trump’s Executive Order 14212 from February of 2025. In a report published by the commission, MAHA has a number of listed goals that range from tackling the chronic disease crisis, to targeting crises that face children. Specifically, MAHA seeks to tackle issues of “poor diet[s],” “aggregation of environmental chemicals,” “overmedicalization” and a “lack of physical activity and chronic stress.”
By all means, if the federal government wants to do well by the people it represents, these are phenomenal places to start and build off from. So much so that in December 2024, YouGov reported that 57% of Republicans and 36% of U.S. citizens are in favor of MAHA.
To say the least, all Americans want to be healthy; with degrees of what this means varying from person-to-person. No matter how much politicians like to capitalize on healthcare to win elections, there is not a single disease, epidemic or pandemic that affects one person differently from another because of their political affiliation. While someone certainly can try to make the argument that this is false, ask yourself if you got the flu because you’re a Republican, or if it is because everyone in your workplace or dorm has been coughing and sniffling lately.
However, an argument that would certainly be viable is that political ideas or leaders, when enacted or act, have an effect on people. As an example, because countless political leaders at both the state and federal levels had an empathetic take to urgently tackle the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump began Operation Warp Speed. As a result, countless American lives that were at stake due to the threat of COVID-19 were saved.
While MAHA certainly has political elements interwoven, because it is the thought baby of politicians, you cannot disregard the entirety of it just because it comes from a Republican president or someone aligning with a Republican president. If that was something that we do as Americans, then we should be criticizing former President Dwight D. Eisenhower for rolling out the polio vaccine.
Despite this argument, people are doing exactly that.
However, the big question that remains is: “Why are people upset with MAHA and RFK Jr.?”
You can find more than one answer to this question. One article from the Brookings Institution raises some potential answers, wherein the author alleges that RFK Jr. spreads misinformation by spreading anti-vaccine rhetoric, spreads “unscientific” claims and supports “racist pseudoscience.”
Another answer could be found in how Governor of Hawaii Josh Green has commented on Kennedy. Specifically, the governor stated prior to RFK Jr.’s confirmation that, “If Mr. Kennedy is confirmed as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services under Donald Trump and serves as our nation’s chief health care officer, there is a real danger that he will continue to spread doubt and misinformation, potentially causing vaccination rates to fall and leading to more preventable deaths. America can’t allow that to happen.”
Reading these two potential answers to the question, you can draw the conclusion that the controversy stems from vaccines. You’d be correct because that is exactly what is at the center of the issues between some Americans and Kennedy. While it is needless to say that neither RFK Jr. or MAHA are only about vaccines, they seem to be what the public is focusing on.
A big reason for this is that vaccine advisers for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are set to make decisions soon about the federal government’s recommendations for children’s routine immunizations. Additionally, RFK Jr. has raised his own concerns about negative side effects of some vaccines, which subsequently landed him in hot water as people think he’s going to cut some recommendations as he did for the COVID-19 vaccine.
While there is nothing to report on yet in terms of the federal government’s revised recommendations, people are noticing an unrelated issue in the news and are making a comparison. Specifically, the CDC decisions are piggybacking on what Governor Ron DeSantis and other Floridian leaders are doing in the Sunshine State, as they are seeking to end vaccine mandates for schoolchildren.
While Florida can do what Florida does, disregarding Kennedy as an evil witch doctor, or MAHA as a political ploy, is simply wrong. While we should certainly reject the things that are negative, throwing out the entirety of either is boorish.
Michael Duke, GSB ‘26, is a business administration major from Scottsdale, Arizona.
