Make America Healthy Again: Here is what came before it
The Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement garnered a lot of attention during the election and healthy eating received more coverage than usual. “Food has become one of the biggest stories of the 2024 Presidential Campaign,” Forbes reported.
However, long before the MAHA movement was cool, alternatives to Big Medicine, like Health Care Sharing Ministries (HCSMs), were making Americans healthy again.
Years ago, some of us noticed an odd correlation; Americans are the richest people on Earth, spending more on health care and consuming more medications than any other group in human history. And yet, we are also one of the sickest, fattest, saddest populations, with a declining life expectancy for the first time in generations. To be sure, food plays a critical role in our health, as the fearless MAHA leader Robert F. Kennedy Jr. points out.
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Underlying the MAHA movement is a recognition that Big Medicine is never coming to save you. In fact, it can be a net harm. Medical errors have been reported as the third leading cause of death, behind heart disease and cancer. The safest and the most powerful hands in which to place your health are your own since 80% of chronic illness and premature death could be prevented through healthier choices around food, movement, and smoking.
Health Care Sharing Ministries counts on the powerful combination of our own sovereignty, accountability to a faith community, and grace from God. Joining an HCSM means you are publicly committing to live a healthy lifestyle. HCSMs often support new members in starting with a wellness program rather than turning them away for obesity or chronic illness. We recognize that our communities do better financially, spiritually and physically when we choose better in our individual daily lives, rather than outsourcing the power over our health to Big Medicine.
The business model of Big Medicine only succeeds when we are sick, when that sickness is for life, and when that lifelong sickness requires high-priced stuff to be done to us or bought for us. Most doctors are not trying to keep you sick in perpetuity — but they are hamstrung by the two biggest impediments to our health. First, medical education is built on hierarchy, authority and “The Science,” as found in pharma-funded journals publishing pharma-funded studies. This “priesthood” relies on being the sole purveyors of medical truth, even as they have been proven wrong time and time again, from cholesterol to peanut allergies to hormone replacement therapy.
Second, Big Medicine is not only a groupthink disciplinary body, but also a business model. Doctors are cogs in that giant corporate machine incentivized by sickness rather than health. Big Medicine does not allow for dissenting voices promoting sunlight, sleep, stress relief, whole foods our grandparents would recognize, hydration, regular movement, meaningful human connections and spiritual purpose. Big Medicine does not emphasize these commonsense strategies that every tribe and tongue in human history has recognized as the keys to maintaining wellness. These strategies compete too effectively against their Wall Street-driven interests.
After all, doctors and hospitals only get paid when you’re sick. How do we get a system incentivized and equipped to keep us healthy? That’s the real question.
Health Care Sharing Ministries also frequently share in more holistic therapies, as well as the growing movement called Direct Primary Care, where doctors are paid a monthly subscription to keep you well with unlimited visits and easy access to your doctor, rather than only getting paid when you’re sick and come in for a seven-minute sick care visit. Direct Primary Care allows doctors to know you and to take time to address root causes which can reduce downstream costs and poor outcomes.
Breaking free of the Big Medicine machine requires a commitment to the ethos of personal responsibility and agency. We want to exit the broken Big Medicine system that tries to control us, violate our consciences and price gouge us.
Now, any of us could need catastrophic help at some point. There are events causing serious injury, like car accidents and bullet wounds that actually allow our acute care system to shine. But most of the time, timeless wisdom about wholesome living has the most to offer us. Each of us must evaluate our options for the sick care system for ourselves. Nobody is more of an expert or cares about your health more than you. Not Big Pharma, not Big Food, and certainly not Big Medicine.
Katy Talento, ND is CEO of AllBetter Health, the Executive Director of the Alliance of Health Care Sharing Ministries, and an epidemiologist and naturopathic doctor. She was the top health advisor on the White House Domestic Policy Council during the Trump Administration.
