Trump Deserves a 2nd Term for His Health Initiative Alone

President-elect Trump deserves a second term for his embrace of RFK Jr.'s initiative to Make America Healthy Again. In the wealthiest nation on earth, healthcare remains unaffordable, while the physical health of its people is at a crisis point.

The statistics are alarming:

"The U.S. spends nearly twice as much on healthcare as other high-income countries, yet has the lowest life expectancy and highest rates of chronic diseases and obesity among these nations."

75% of Americans are metabolically overweight or obese. Setting aside the direct correlation that obesity has to heart disease, diabetes, and other ailments, it's difficult to estimate the cost of someone's quality of life.

An equally dire issue is the rise of autism. One in 36 children are diagnosed with the disease - a stark contrast to its rarity in the 1960s to early 1980s, when is affected only 0.01 to 0.05 percent of all children. RFK Jr., at the age of 70, made a brilliant observation in a recent interview,

• “I have never in my life seen a man my age with full-blown autism, not once. Where are these men?”

Despite such urgent concerns, few politicians have been willing to challenge the status quo. For that reason alone, President-elect Trump deserves a second term as he not only embraced the challenge, but he also brought a political rival, RFK Jr., onto his campaign to champion the effort.

It's possible that this issue is another reason why the Harris-Biden-Walz campaign lost in such convincing fashion. In painfully sharp contrast, President Biden and the Democratic Party did the exact opposite. Instead of addressing the causes and potential prevention of autism and obesity, they embraced an ideological shift, framing autism and obesity as something to be celebrated rather than understood or mitigated. As Jill Escher notes in The Free Press:

• Instead of pushing for vigorous inquiry into causes and possible prevention of autism, the current administration let itself become part of an identitarian movement that celebrates autism. The federal Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee often acted as Orwellian language police, downplaying the disabling aspects of autism and the very desperate needs of families. The National Institutes of Health even proposed to remove “reducing disability” from its mission statement, expressing concerns about “ableism.”

• President Joe Biden himself overrode the traditional “Autism Awareness Day” to proclaim it as “World Autism Acceptance Day,” with the Department of Health and Human Services declaring all of April as “Autism Acceptance Month.” This resulted in a stream of federal messaging romanticizing this often horrifically debilitating disorder, one that is projected to soon burden the country with $1 trillion a year in expenses.

• Dr. Rachel Levine, Assistant Secretary for Health for the Biden administration: "Body positivity is about embracing and celebrating all body types, recognizing that health and beauty come in many forms. It's essential for promoting mental and physical well-being."

Responding to the crisis, Trump pledged to establish a panel of experts who will work with RFK Jr. “to investigate what is causing the decades-long increase in chronic health problems and childhood diseases, including autoimmune disorders, autism, obesity, infertility, and many more.”

As the old adage goes, the first step to solving a problem is admitting you have one. Though the challenge is daunting, the promise of the incoming Trump administration harnessing federal resources to prioritize American's health offers long-overdue hope for meaningful change.