RFK Jr. was confirmed as Trump's health secretary

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What is next for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security after he was confirmed? Five issues to watch as President Kennedy takes control of the health agency

Kennedy was confirmed because of his assurances to Cassidy, the chairman of the Senate’s health committee. Cassidy would have oversight over some of his decisions at HHS and he promised not to interfere with current vaccine policy.

Kennedy is one of the country’s most prominent vaccine opponents. During confirmation hearings, he repeatedly claimed he was not anti-vaccine or against the vaccine schedule, and he said he supported certain vaccines, including the one for polio. He did not think that the link between vaccines and ASD had been proven correct.

The tally was 52 to 48. McConnell was the only Republican who voted against Kennedy.

During the COVID pandemic McConnell was a supporter of the vaccine and the push to develop treatments, telling the Associated Press that the moment reminded him of the fear surrounding polio in his childhood.

There are many questions about what happens next for Medicare, vaccines and medical research. Here are five issues to watch as Kennedy takes control of the health agency in the coming weeks.

If cuts beyond waste and abuse are made, the funds for Trump’s priorities like tax cuts and border security will be freed up. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Medicaid has grown so large that conservative groups have argued that it is too big. The proposal from House Republicans would seek to find $880 billion in cuts to Medicaid. Benefits would likely be cut by states. Medicare could also be in for cuts of some kind as well.

Amid talks of cuts, President Trump declared that his team would “love and cherish” Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security and that any cuts would be related to waste or abuse and wouldn’t affect beneficiaries.

Mehmet Oz, the heart surgeon, TV personality and former candidate for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, is Trump’s pick to lead the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). A date for Oz’s confirmation hearing is not yet set.

The 2010 Measles outbreak in Gaines County, Fla., by RFK Jr.: The future of HHS, CDC, and Head Start

As the senators voted to confirm Kennedy, a Measles outbreak continued. As Marfa Public Radio reported, nine people have been hospitalized in an outbreak of at least 24 measles cases in Gaines County, which has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the United States. Most of the cases are children who were unvaccinated.

The promises made by the committee’s former chair, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wa., were not credible. Republicans are pretending that RFK Jr. won’t use his new power to undermine vaccine safety, since he has been trying to do that for decades.

Kennedy could change public health messaging about the importance of vaccines, and make recommendations on whether or not to get a vaccine. Kennedy will be watched by public health advocates and medical advocates.

Right now, HHS has a budget of nearly $2 trillion and a staff of 90,000 people. Medicaid and Medicare are part of that budget and are used by seniors and low-income people. The staff from the DOGE has been at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for several weeks.

The FDA, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health are part of HHS.

Project 2025, the blueprint from the Heritage Foundation that has so far aligned closely with DOGE’s actions, proposes dramatic changes to HHS, including splitting CDC into two agencies and eliminating Head Start. Kennedy hasn’t spoken much about his intentions for the agencies, but he promised to fire 600 researchers at the NIAID and instruct the agency to find the root causes of chronic diseases.

Several executive orders about “ideology” caused federal health agencies to delete scores of databases and web pages that included forbidden terms like “gender,” although seemingly unrelated websites on tuberculosis and natural disasters went dark as well. The agencies have been ordered by a federal judge to restore the pages, but their sudden disappearance of resources, including those used by doctors daily, has alarmed public health and medicine. It’s not clear how research about groups that can’t be Mentioned can continue.

The bipartisan support and national pride that has been given to this type of research has not been spared either. NIH’s grants to research institutions have already been targeted for dramatic cuts, another move that is currently paused by a federal judge. Several Republican senators spoke out about how harmful the policy could be to large research institutions. Kennedy promised Collins he would review the policy when he was confirmed, according to her statement.

“Individuals, parents, and families have a right to push for a healthier nation and demand the best possible scientific guidance on preventing and treating illness. But a record of trafficking in dangerous conspiracy theories and eroding trust in public health institutions does not entitle Mr. Kennedy to lead these important efforts.

He hasn’t yet laid out how he can use policy and his power overseeing the agencies to “put the health of America back on track.” He spoke a lot during the hearings about food programs outside of HHS’ jurisdiction, suggesting maybe he will seek to work with the Department of Agriculture to collaborate on programs like SNAP.

There are powerful industries that could push back against some of his goals like Big Food and Big Pharma, as NPR has reported. Public health researchers are wondering how realistic an reform in a Republican government will be.

At a press conference on Thursday, President Trump disparaged McConnell’s fitness to be the Republican leader and said that he didn’t know anything about McConnell having polio. He’s a very bitter man, Trump said.

McConnell was the only Republican that voted against Pete Hegseth for defense secretary and against a director of national intelligence.

Vaccines, the Wild, and the Wild: How President Kennedy and Senator Bill Cassidy Found the Future of America as a Superpower

He was paralysis in his left leg after contracting the disease in 1944, just before the vaccine was available. The elimination of the disease started with the immunization campaigns in the 1950s.

The 82-year-old McConnell, who has served in the Senate since 1985 and is the longest serving party leader in that body, recovered from polio when he was 4. He still walks with a limp and suffers health problems related to the illness.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., a physician and the chair of the Senate’s health committee, was originally hesitant but changed his mind last week after promises Kennedy made him.

Theodora Hatziioannou, a scientist at the Rockefeller University in New York City who creates new models for studying HIV, says that the future of America as a superpower appears grim. He didn’t follow scientific evidence when he claimed to support issues. Having a wolf guard the sheep as a leader is what this person is supposed to do.

Some researchers who could benefit from an emphasis on chronic disease are hesitant. Although Eric Lau thinks it would be great to see more money spent on cancer research, the feds should focus on increasing funding for medical research in general.

Both he and Larry Schlesinger, a physician-scientist and chief executive of the Texas Biomedical Research Institute in San Antonio, say that the idea of cutting one field to benefit another creates a false dichotomy between chronic and infectious disease that isn’t rooted in scientific reality.

As an example of how tightly the two are linked, researchers cite increasing evidence that some chronic conditions stem from infectious diseases: infection with human papillomavirus (HPV), for instance, can cause cancer of the cervix and other tissues. According to him, priorities have shifted from chronic diseases to infectious diseases, as he was himself diagnosed with oral cancer decades before. Infections andInflammation play an important role in chronic conditions, and we are more aware of it.

Scientists also say that the ongoing outbreak of bird flu, which has made at least 68 people in the United States ill since the start of 2024, makes this an especially bad time to cut research into infectious diseases.

Kennedy has made a number of calls for further studies on diet and nutrition, as well as research on links between environmental pollution and human health, as part of his pledge to make America healthy again. Kennedy asked why researchers hadn’t focused on finding and eliminating the cause of obesity during his January hearing, when he said that scientists knew that it was caused by an environmental toxin.