Robert F. Kennedy Jr. isn’t convinced that “society” should pay to treat people with unhealthy habits.
Asked in a CBS interview about the basic level of care every American should receive and who should pay for it, Kennedy said that “when it comes to healthcare, that’s a difficult question” with moral and philosophical considerations.
“People have a choice about how sick they’re going to be—many people,” President Donald Trump’s secretary of health and human services said. “If you don’t have any choice then we should give you all the resources that you want. If you’re smoking three packs of cigarettes a day, should you expect society to pay when you get sick?”
At another point in the interview, which aired Wednesday, Kennedy addressed the deadly measles outbreak in West Texas that has killed two children and infected more than 500 people.
The World Health Organization had declared measles eradicated in the U.S. in 2000, but anti-vaccine sentiment has enabled a reemergence in recent years.
As this year’s crisis worsened, Kennedy has been forced to acknowledge the vaccine’s efficacy, but he had previously stopped short of explicitly advising people to get the measles vaccine, according to CBS.
Pushed by chief medical correspondent Jon LaPook, he said, “We encourage people to get the measles vaccine.”
“The federal government’s position, my position, is that people should get the measles vaccine,” but he added, “The government should not be mandating those.”
He didn’t address the fact that both of the people who have died from the latest measles outbreak were children who couldn’t make that choice for themselves.
The disease is highly contagious and can cause severe infections in the lungs and brain that can lead to cognitive issues, deafness or death. The MMR vaccine is extremely safe and effective for preventing it.
But after a six-year-old girl died in Gaines County, her Mennonite parents stood by their decision not to vaccinate her and said they would encourage other parents not to give their kids the shot, the Texas Tribute reported.
“The measles wasn’t that bad. They got over it pretty quickly,” the mother said of the girl’s four siblings. The others came down with the disease after their sister died but eventually recovered.
The anti-vaccine organization that Kennedy founded, Children’s Health Defense, posted the interview on its website. The secretary of health and human services has long peddled discredited conspiracy theories about vaccines causing autism.
In the case of adults choosing not to get vaccinated, Kennedy didn’t say whether, in line with his smoking hypothetical, society should pay to treat people who choose not to get vaccinated and then come down with deadly diseases.
The government should “incentivize people to take care of themselves, and then when they get sick, make sure they’re taken care of,” he concluded.
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