NASHVILLE, Tenn. — While Tennessee leads the nation in many ways, it often ranks as one of the unhealthiest states in the country. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tennessee Republican leadership hope to address that issue within the boundaries of traditional American liberty.
Kennedy stopped by the Tennessee state capitol on Wednesday for a meeting with Governor Bill Lee and other GOP leadership as part of his Take Back Your Health tour. During his speech, Kennedy spoke about various initiatives the Trump administration had launched to invest in rural health care, remove harmful additives from food, increase pricing transparency, and study the dramatic increase in autism.
“President Trump told me that [he] wants to make the American public, every patient, the CEO of their own healthcare [so] that you can make good decisions and that you’ll have access to your own information,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy’s speech was given in the old chambers of the Tennessee Supreme Court to a packed crowd of lawmakers and invited guests. He received a warm welcome from the crowd, but was met with a few hecklers outside the room who were upset about some of Kennedy’s positions on vaccines.
Kennedy in Nashville: Daily Wire.
Kennedy was introduced by state GOP leadership that included Lee and Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson (R-Franklin).
“Tennessee is leading the nation in many ways, and there’s a lot of things we can brag about. But when we’re doing that, you should also acknowledge areas where we need to do better. And one of those is with regards to our health outcomes,” Johnson said, noting that the Volunteer State had comparatively high rates of infant mortality, obesity, and diabetes
According to HHS, Tennessee ranks 44th in the nation in terms of overall health due to drug overdoses, chronic health problems, smoking, physical inactivity, premature death, obesity, and preventable hospitalizations.
Part of reversing this trend is eating better food, one of the reasons why Kennedy’s HHS flipped the food pyramid last month to recommend whole foods, prioritizing healthy fats and protein, and limiting or avoiding ultra-processed foods.
“Our job is not to tell Americans what to eat. It’s to tell them what’s good for them and to give them good information. If you want to drink a Coca-Cola or eat a Krispy Kreme donut, you live in America, you ought to be able to do that. But we’re going to tell you what the cost is. It seems cheap at the grocery store but the long term costs may not be worth it,” Kennedy said Wednesday.
Kennedy said that the government spends about $405 million per day to subsidize meals through school lunch programs, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and other government programs. Kennedy said that raising the standard for the food paid for in these programs would “transform” the quality of the food the people were getting through the programs and help the farmers produce “real food.”
Rep. Bryan Terry, the chair of the Tennessee House Health Committee, told The Daily Wire that sometimes poor health outcomes were the result of bad choices.
“In Tennessee, we’re not banning Big Gulps,” he said, noting that Tennesseans value individual liberty and that “sometimes that liberty that you have leads to bad choices.”
But that doesn’t mean the government will fund unhealthy decisions. In December, Lee led Tennessee to join a handful of other states that ban Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients from using the money given to them by the government to buy soda, energy drinks, and candy.
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