MAHA's plan for Medicare & Medicaid
The privatization plans are in motion
Most people reveal themselves over time. You just have to listen to what they say.
That can be a challenge when their rhetoric whizzes by you with increasing frenzy. Such is the case with RFK Jr advisor and Truemed founder, Calley Means.
In a recent interview with Politico, Means unleashed a firehose of falsehoods that proved impossible to factcheck in real time. He also revealed the MAHA playbook for Medicare and Medicaid.
First, I want to give two common features of right-wing media: deflection and redirection. Then, I’ll look at two sentences that expose the MAHA playbook for social services: a healthcare deregulation effort aligned with the Trump administration’s Project 2025 agenda.
For more background on Calley Means’s seemingly compromised objectives, check out this short video:
Deflection & redirection
Politico’s Dasha Burns did a good job trying to keep Means on topic. She couldn’t possibly check his inflated data and outright falsehoods in real-time, but she tried to hold him to account for HHS’s severe cuts. He never actually replied, however.
Burn’s first attempt:
There’s news of of massive cuts to HHS. At this point, about a quarter of HHS's 82,000 employees have left or are expected to be terminated. Some of the changes here: you've laid off big chunks of offices in charge of vaccine and drug research, HIV/AIDS research, funding for services for the elderly and low-income people, STD prevention, rural health, with very little lead time. What do you say to people in the public who are concerned now about drug safety, about whether we’re prepared for the next pandemic when these cuts have happened so hard so fast?
Means’s immediate redirection:
Yeah, I'd say to the reporters in the room and the lobbyists in the room, I mean obviously make your case, but I'd truly ask for a little bit of humility about what the voters were trying to say by putting Bobby Kennedy Jr in this position of power. A little bit of humility to ask why Bobby Kennedy, along with President Trump, are the two most popular political figures in America, by far, what the voters are trying to say, and I think they were right that the system is really on the wrong track.
Means never addresses Burns’s question. He dances around it, saying they’re not severe, though here she does hold him to account. He continually deflects.
The back and forth lasts about eight minutes, with Burns unable to pin him down. So she changes tactics:
So you come in, you're you're getting rid of of of the the fat, you've come in, you've cut a bunch of people. How do you then actually move and turn the ship toward what you're talking about?
Burns throws a complete softball to lay out the Kennedy policy agenda. Means fails miserably, because he can’t actually address that. Again he redirects:
You install Marty Makary, who is the first FDA commissioner in the past three decades who said he's not going to go to a pharma job right afterwards, as 11 of the 12 previous FDA commissioners have done. You install Jay Bhattacharya, who is the pinnacle of academic courage. You install Dr Oz, who is an incredible human being, who's put together incredible team who's ready to reform.
Classic right-wing technique: avoid laying out a policy goal or addressing criticism by going on the attack. Makary might have pledged that his role as FDA commissioner is not an audition for another job during his senate hearings, but there’s nothing binding in a congressional response. Makary has played loose with data before: his study that claims medical errors are the third-leading cause of death in America has been debunked, yet he (and many other MAHA activists) continue to repeat the trope.
Calling Jay Bhattacharya the “pinnacle of academic courage” is quite the stretch, given that the co-author of the anti-Covid restriction manifesto, the Great Barrington Declaration, has been funded by the Heritage Foundation before—the same group behind Project 2025. He’s built a career favoring business interests over accessible and affordable health care.
Dr Oz being an “incredible human being” has nothing to do with the question. Another common tactic, especially in wellness spaces: weaponize anecdotes to avoid criticism. Means and his sister, Casey, nearly always tell the story of their mother dying from cancer at the top of interviews (as he did with this talk with Burns). While it’s horrible to lose anyone to cancer, the story serves to win over the audience’s emotions and put the questioner on guard. Discussing Oz’s supposed incredibleness deflects from the fact that he’s a prolific grifter completely unqualified to run the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
Which is where we turn to next.
Code switching
The fact that the GOP claims they’re not touching Medicare and Medicaid has always been rich considering Project 2025 has been free to read online since 2023. The document clearly shows how to shuffle taxpayer money away from socialized services into the private market.
Which is exactly what Means expresses. I bolded key words in these two sentences that help reveal the actual agenda.
There’s many interests that want to see more healthcare flexibility, take advantage of and support Bobby Kennedy. We said, let's get Medicare and Medicaid, not to a top-down system where you jab certain pills down kids' throats who are sick, but actually have a system where there’s more HSA-type accounts for Medicare [and] Medicaid.
Let’s break it down:
Many interests. There are many business interests that want to see more “healthcare flexibility.” This tracks with Project 2025’s deregulatory agenda, which is why Means regularly emphasizes the role of biotech startups in health care, for example: VC money flowing into private industry healthcare solutions will require a major return on investment. They are quite interested in accessing taxpayer money that’s moved from social services into public-private partnerships.
Healthcare flexibility. Rewording a right-wing trope: Americans don’t really want socialized medicine, they want to free market solutions. Never mind the fact that all nations that offer socialized medicine also have private insurance and health system options. The right regularly weaponizes “choice,” as if that would be stripped away if we had universal health care. It’s not true, but the right’s messaging has long exploited this myth.
Top-down system. Classic Heritage Foundation lingo, which isn’t surprising considering Means interned there early in his career. Faux populism: Americans don’t want the nanny state dictating all actions from the top down; true change begins from “bottom-up” thinking. Any time you hear the term “top down,” that’s code for “we want this service on the free market.”
Jab certain pills. Wellness may have turned right, but the right has fully embraced wellness’s emphasis on personal responsibility in matters of health. Means is claiming that government-provided health care only uses pharmaceuticals as the first response to everything. Also untrue, though it paints a stark picture. Bonus points for using “jab,” the anti-vax choice of words for vaccines, even though that’s not how you ingest pills.
More-HSA type accounts. The big reveal. Means’s company, Truemed, lets consumers use HSA and FSA money to purchase a variety of untested wellness products. The legality of this is in question. While I address this in more depth in the video above, it would certainly benefit Means for the government to shuffle more money into HSA spending. He doesn’t want to get rid of Medicare and Medicaid; he seems to want to profit from it, however.
MAHA is the Heritage Foundation’s Trojan Horse. By demonizing the medical system at every turn while putting the onus of health on the individual, they’re helping erode whatever trust is left in socialized services so they can fully privatize health care.
MAHA has never been about making people healthy. You just have to listen to what they say.