This article originally appeared onThe Defenderand was republished with permission.
Vaccines and measles outbreaks dominated a long day on Capitol Hill as U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. faced back-to-back hearings on Wednesday.
The afternoon session before the U.S. SenateHealth, Education, Labor and Pensions Committeefollowed a tense morning appearance before theSenate Finance Committee.
Across both hearings — Kennedy’s sixth and seventh in just over a week — lawmakers covered everything from drug prices to rural healthcare to environmental risks.
But the sharpest exchanges kept circling back tomeasles.
“People have been talking about measles all day long,” Kennedy said. While outbreaks matter, he said, “We also can’t just talk about that in exclusion to the thing that is killing our country.”
Kennedy pointed to chronic disease, which accounts for 90% of the nation’s $4.9 trillion in annualhealthcare costs. “We need to do something to protect our children,” he said.
The U.S. has the highest chronic disease burden of any country in the world, and “during COVID, we had thehighest death rateof any country on Earth,” Kennedy said.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the two are connected.
“When you ask CDC, ‘Why did all these people die from COVID?’ … They say it’s because of our chronic disease epidemic,” he said. “The average American who died had 3.8 chronic diseases.”
Source: The Vigilant Fox
