Tightening Border Security Will Yield Health Benefits for Americans

The left is hysterical over the prospect of a Trump administration in charge of the nation’s health policy.Yet life expectancy in America peaked in 2014 and has been shrinking nearly every year since then, an indicator that Americans’ health is declining. This despite the trillions spent covering the uninsured. Expanding insurance is not the panacea it was promised to be.A shakeup is needed.Here’s what should be on the Trump agenda:1. Focus on Healthy Eating To Combat Chronic DiseasesPresident-elect Trump’s controversial health advisor, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is targeting unhealthy eating, particularly processed foods.He’s on to something. Findings in the journal Nature/Food suggest that switching from an unhealthy diet to a healthy one can add 8.9 years to a 40-year-old man’s life expectancy, and 8.6 years to a 40-year-old woman’s.Anti-smoking campaigns reduced smoking to 11 percent today from 40 percent of the adult population in 1969. The same can probably be done for eating.2. End Mission Confusion at the Centers for Disease Control and PreventionThat’s the advice of Trump’s inner health circle, including Drs. Scott Gottlieb and Joel Zinberg.The agency now focuses on woke issues. Meanwhile, it flubbed its response to the biggest disease threat of our lifetimes, Covid, as I documented in my book “The Next Pandemic.”The CDC’s unscientific guidelines on masking, social distancing, and vaccines were the basis for draconian assaults on people’s right to assemble and to keep their businesses open. Americans should be relieved to hear Mr. Kennedy swear it will never happen again.A CDC shakeup is also needed to reduce hospital infections, which kill more people — 75,000 a year — than breast cancer.If a previous occupant of a hospital bed had an infection, the risk that the next patient gets it soars 583 percent per Columbia School of Nursing research. Inadequate cleaning is the reason.Yet instead of imposing rigorous cleaning standards, the CDC helps hospitals hide outbreaks from the public. You don’t want to be in a hospital overrun with a deadly germ, but the CDC calls it “hospital A,” preventing you from knowing.It’s an example of the cozy relationship between health companies and the government that Mr. Kennedy claims he wants to clean up.3. Make Insurance Affordable The price of health coverage — $25,500 for a family of four — is one of the public’s top worries, according to Pew Research.The expansion of Medicaid to 80 million during the last decade is partly to blame.Medicaid shortchanges hospitals, paying them 88 cents for every dollar of care delivered.Hospitals keep profits up by shifting unpaid Medicaid costs onto patients who get coverage through a job or buy it themselves. The bigger Medicaid gets, the higher premiums go.Republicans intend to rein in Medicaid enrollment, which will help anyone who pays for insurance.Affordable Care Act rules require individuals to buy a long list of “essential” benefits. It’s like telling car buyers their only choice is a fully loaded SUV. Some car buyers just want wheels.Trump will allow more affordable plans, as he did in his first term — before President Biden barred them.4. Close the Border and Tighten SecurityThis health policy will yield the fastest results, halting the influx of contagious diseases, alleviating the crush of migrants in emergency rooms and interrupting the flow of fentanyl.Drug deaths alone are cutting American life expectancy by two-thirds of a year.When a young addict is arrested or overdoses, desperate family members often fork over life savings to unscrupulous addiction “recovery” outfits.Mr. Kennedy is proposing a network of public “healing farms” where people struggling with addiction can go, try to heal themselves and obtain skills for a sober life. Any parent who’s gone through this with a child will say, “What have we got to lose?”Also, the public’s worries about Mr. Kennedy’s vaccine views are likely overblown. Mandated vaccinations have enabled America to defeat polio, measles, and other diseases.Mr. Kennedy said this week, “We’re not going to take vaccines away from anybody.”Only you don’t have to take his word. Neither Mr. Kennedy nor Trump will have the power to eliminate childhood vaccinations. The Supreme Court ruled in 1905 that states have the authority to require vaccinations or not. Each state has its own vaccine mandates. During Covid, the court affirmed that, striking down Mr. Biden’s proposed national vaccine mandate on employees of large companies.All in all, the left is frantically defending a public health status quo that offers $25,000 premiums for family health coverage, declining lifespans, junk food, coverups of hospital dangers, and unpreparedness for the next germ threat.Trump’s health advisors insist we can do better. I agree.Creators.com

Tightening Border Security Will Yield Health Benefits for Americans

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