Words Matter — Health Policy

The President says he wants to “make America healthy again.”

Who could argue with that? We lag behind other developed nations in life expectancy. The US maternal mortality rate is several times higher than in the European Union, and well over double Canada’s rate. On various other metrics, we live shorter, sicker lives than people in other high-income nations.

The causes are clear: inequities in access to health care and social services; government subsidies of sugar, grain, and seeds; food deserts and ultra-processed foods. Behind those: poverty, basically, enabled by a combination of government inaction and corporate greed.

But it turns out what really interests Trump’s handlers is that sick kids aren’t eligible for military service.

Take a minute with that. Trump has declared a “crisis” of chronic diseases in children because he is concerned about the drop in military recruitment rates. 

The three most common disqualifiers, per the Centers for Disease Control and the bipartisan Council for a Strong America: overweight, insufficient education, and a criminal record. 

Solutions? Spend more on pre-k programs. Good early childhood education gives kids cognitive and emotional resources that help them stay in school and ultimately reduces crime. Spend more money on K-12 education, especially in areas that have been underfunded since … forever. Spend more money to make sure kids get enough to eat: food insecurity is a significant driver of obesity in children (and adults). 

But Trumpist logic leaps past asthma and cancer to autism, ADHD, and mental health.

Executive Order, February 13, 2025

The cause of this crisis in youth mental health? “Over-utilization of medication” and the “threat” of SSRIs, antipsychotics, and stimulants, alongside electromagnetic radiation, corporate cronyism, Government policies, and corrupt science.

The proposed fix? Radical ideas. Things no one [in Trumplandia] has thought of before: nutritious food, “healthy lifestyles,” physical activity, “transparent data,” education.

Words have power. Promoting “lifestyle” and physical activity while simultaneously blaming childhood disease on medication is disingenous. 

In the context of Trump administration actions —sowing chaos by randomly firing civil servants, destroying social service agencies, deleting websites and databases, and hobbling scientific research — these words are empty.

Mendacious, misleading, meaningless: Trump’s words are dangerous.