Modern “Public Health” primarily focuses on disease prevention and treatment, rather than on health promotion. “Public Health” relies on top-down, centrally planned interventions imposed on populations rather than individually optimized health promotion and treatment decisions. The “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) movement strives to focus on health promotion rather than disease treatment. Success in this enormous transformational endeavor will require a re-examination of the organizational, cultural, and structural drivers that have led to the currently dominant focus on disease.

One simplistic argument is that this modern focus on disease is the consequence of “capitalism” and the profit motive (as embodied by “Big Pharma”) distorting what should be a public utility (“healthcare"). While the predatory nature of many large pharmaceutical firms and their marketing arms is self-evident, they have become adept at exploiting a niche, a business opportunity, that emerged consequent to fundamental political and sociological trends towards centralized planning based on utilitarianism and socialist theories………

If we are to succeed in the endeavor to Make America Great Again, and to Make America Health Again, we would heed his wisdom and advice. Paraphrasing Shakespeare, the fault, dear citizens, lies neither in our stars, capitalism, nor “Big Pharma”, but in ourselves. As both physicians and as citizens, we must wean ourselves from the false idol of centralized planning, utilitarianism, socialism, a nanny state bureaucracy and a conflicted medical elite that seeks to optimize equality of outcomes, and return to a belief and commitment to the ability of free people to make their own decisions about how they live and their own health.

Once again, a thoughtful reminder that centralized planning and direction are contrary to the public weal. Who should be planning for your health? The thoughtful, and perhaps best answer would be you and your physician or healer and nobody else? Why? Because both of you have “skin in the game,” especially in health related areas of your life.