MAHA Isn’t About Health. It’s Healthism.

Eight months ago, I had surgery to fix my blood pressure. It cost $50,000, and my copay was only $100. I remember telling my aunt “Thank God I got good insurance.” It hadn’t occurred to me to check the price beforehand; I assumed my plan would cover the lion’s share. For me it was a simple medical decision. For many Americans it would be a financial calculation that determines whether they even seek care.

This reality is at odds with the promises of the Make America Healthy Again movement. The message is simple: eat better, exercise more, take your vitamins. It’s not wrong as far as it goes. But it’s incomplete in a way that matters: it treats health as a matter of individual discipline while ignoring the policies that shape our food, our neighborhoods, our workplaces, and our access to care.

Recently, a few videos from the HHS’ X account have gone viral, and not for good reasons. In one, Mike Tyson aggressively slaps a scintillating donut out of someone’s hand and proclaims “Processed Food Kills! Remember that.” In another, RFK Jr himself is shirtless, exercising in thick denim pants along with elderly and considerably less brolic Kid Rock.

As a primary care doctor, I counsel people about diet, exercise and salt intake every clinic afternoon. But increasingly, I’m hearing from patients about financial hardship: not being able to find work, afford food or transportation to the clinic. Preventive advice is useless if people can’t afford to act on it.

This is not just anecdotal. Millions of Americans experience food insecurity and live in places that make healthy choices difficult. Many communities lack safe, walkable streets; many families juggle work schedules that make regular clinic visits impossible. When public policy strips away supports, like cuts to nutrition programs, weakened environmental protections, underfunded public health agencies, the burden of staying healthy shifts from society to the individual. That shift has a name: healthism.

Sociologist Robert Crawford coined the term to describe an ideology that places responsibility for health primarily on individual behavior, treats health choices as moral judgments, and emphasizes optimizing personal wellness while ignoring the structural forces like economic conditions, labor markets, environmental exposures, which shape health in the first place.

Consider an example: President Donald Trump recently issued an executive order to encourage U.S. production of glyphosate, saying the herbicide is critical to the nation’s security. Compelling evidence suggests glyphosate is likely a carcinogen, leading to non-Hodgkin lymphoma. But when asked about this decision, RFK Jr. said the decision “puts America first where it matters most — our defense readiness and our food supply,” He also emphasized the primacy of national security, because “all of our priorities depend on it.”

The HHS secretary is abetting environmental rollbacks. He was silent on the executive order that changed H-1B visa criteria, the likely effects of which on rural hospitals, heavily dependent on foreign-trained medical doctors, are yet to be fully estimated. The administration, along with the Republican-led congress, has cut SNAP and Medicaid funding, shifting these safety net dollars toward expanding ICE and lowering taxes for the rich. While the government takes away healthcare from people, he tells us to exercise; as FDA commissioner Marty Makary hints at making most medications over-the-counter so people can “avoid having to navigate our healthcare system.” All that is structural is being sublimated into personal responsibility. This is healthism.

Margaret Thatcher’s famous line “There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families” captures the logic underpinning this approach. If there is no society, there is no obligation to regulate pollution. No obligation to fund clinics. No obligation to guarantee food security or access to healthcare. There are only individuals tasked with optimizing themselves.

MAHA is essentially a charade meant to lull its disciples into never-ending self-improvement projects you might have started in the peak era of airport books like “48 laws of Power” or “how to create a habit,” while the government continues to transfer and sequester wealth for the rich and in service of US imperialistic goals on the global stage.

The same pattern appears in the administration’s approach to drug pricing. On the global stage, Trump talks about making drug pricing fairer to Americans. Meanwhile, his signature platform to help people “find the lowest prices on prescription drugs,” TrumpRx, is unfortunately an exercise in branding. A Statnews analysis showed that while TrumpRx lists discounts on more than 40 medications, many of those same drugs already cost less through GoodRx, a popular prescription‑discount search engine.

For example, TrumpRx advertises the acid reflux medication Protonix™ for $200.10 after a 55% discount, but GoodRx offers the generic equivalent pantoprazole for just $10.47 with a coupon. Broader price comparisons reveal that when medications have generic versions, GoodRx is far better, because TrumpRx emphasizes brand‑name manufacturer cash prices (what a gift to Pharma), while GoodRx defaults to generics. Trump repackaged a service that already existed. In other words, even where they claim to be improving people’s material conditions (after cutting millions from health insurance and safety‑net programs), what they are doing is just theater.

In the end, MAHA offers nothing but illusions: rugged individualism draped in the language of natural health and self‑improvement, while the administration’s policies steadily erode the very conditions that foster healthy lives. By showcasing his own physique and turning wellness into a performance, RFK Jr. sends a message: this could be you if you tried. But those who can’t even try live in conditions made more precarious by the administration’s choices. They will shoulder the burden of weakened public health agencies, reduced food assistance, and shrinking access to medical care, even as they’re told to simply try harder.

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RFK Jr. has, materially, little in common with many of the people drawn to his message: he comes from wealth, is insulated from the hardships most Americans face, and thus governs with an indifference to people’s material conditions. During his lifetime, Americans’ life expectancy has gone up, thanks largely to public health and medical innovations he now disparages. The idea of making America healthy again invokes a nostalgic past that never existed. After the damage this administration will cause, I hope their successors come with a more honest goal: Make All Americans Healthy. At Last.