Robert F. Kennedy Jr. bodyslamned a man in a Twinkie costume. He called out Dunkin’. He went after Froot Loops. He is on a national road show promoting dietary guidelines and taking on seed oils and ultraprocessed food. Two thirds of Americans of both parties support him. The movement has a name — Make America Healthy Again — and it has genuine momentum.
It is also a distraction from the biggest fraud in American history.
The insurance industry is blocking Medicare for All — a system that would save $2 trillion over ten years, eliminate medical bankruptcy, cover every American, and save 68,000 lives a year. It is being strangled in its crib by the same industry committing the fraud it was hired to prevent. The insurance industry is not fighting Medicare for All because it is bad policy. It is fighting it because it is the end of their business. Every year of delay is worth more than any lobbying spend. Every blocked vote is worth more than any campaign contribution. The fraud is not just in the billing codes. The fraud is in the Congress that takes the money and calls it governance.
While RFK Jr. is wrestling a Twinkie that same industry is committing the largest ongoing financial theft from the American taxpayer on record. The government’s own nonpartisan accountant — the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission — found that Medicare Advantage insurers overbilled Medicare by $84 billion in a single year. The response from the Trump administration was to increase Medicare Advantage payment rates by $13 billion more. The government will send more than $13 billion in additional payments to Medicare Advantage plans in 2027 — versus the $700 million raise that regulators initially planned. Insurer stocks surged. UnitedHealth jumped 9%. Humana surged 12%.
Here is why the food industry got regulated and the insurance industry got a raise. The food industry spent $6.93 million lobbying Washington last year. The insurance industry spent $130 million. A review of lobbying letters shows the largest Medicare Advantage insurers specifically pressured the Trump administration not to move forward with its risk adjustment proposal — and the final regulation was almost exactly what the plans wanted. The regulation follows the lobbying spend in reverse. The less you pay the more you get regulated. The more you pay the more you get rewarded.
The politicians overseeing this arrangement are not confused about what is happening. Mehmet Oz — the television doctor Trump appointed to run the agency overseeing Medicare Advantage — disclosed during his 2022 Senate campaign hundreds of thousands of dollars in personal investments in UnitedHealth Group and CVS Health. He now regulates them. He announced the $13 billion rate increase as a patient-first decision. The patients are paying higher premiums to fund it. The investors collected 9% overnight.
MAHA will fix your lunch. It will not fix the industry that denied your cancer treatment, reversed 81.7% of its denials on appeal, and billed the government $84 billion extra in a single year while your Medicare premiums went up to cover the difference. The Twinkie got bodyslamned. The insurance industry got a $13 billion raise. The distraction is working. The crime continues.