As “Make America Healthy Again” advocates rise to the upper echelons of health policymaking, their ability to legitimize and implement their philosophy from inside federal agencies has grown.
Now, an administration flirting openly with pseudoscientific approaches to health care could expand the market for MAHA-backed products, using federal agencies’ sway over what qualifies as health savings account, or HSA, spending.
“They’re doing what most purportedly anti-regulatory people have always done, which is to fix the regulatory system in their favor,” Peter Lurie, the president of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said about the MAHA officials at the Department of Health and Human Services. “The idea that these HSAs could be expanding into areas that have no evidence base is something that worries us deeply, and ultimately, I don’t think it’s in the interest of the taxpayer.”