Drug middlemen launch attacks against MAGA allies pushing for health care reforms



Pharmacy benefit managers like CVS are going after President Donald Trump's allies who are seeking meaningful health care reforms for their constituents.

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) and Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry (R) have become the primary target of PBMs, which are threatened by their push to implement reforms in drug costs. Threatened by MAGA allies, PBMs have now escalated these conflicts to legal disputes.

'These massive corporations are attacking our state because we will be the first in the country to hold them accountable.'

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In April, Huckabee Sanders signed legislation banning PBMs from "engaging in anticompetitive practices" by owning pharmacies. PBMs are tasked with negotiating drug prices between pharmacies and insurance companies, but by buying up pharmacies, they are able to take advantage of the health care system and inflate the cost of pharmaceuticals, pushing competitors out of business, according to Huckabee Sanders' press release.

“For far too long, drug middlemen called PBMs have taken advantage of lax regulations to abuse customers, inflate drug prices, and cut off access to critical medications," Huckabee Sanders said in a statement. “Not any more. These massive corporations are attacking our state because we will be the first in the country to hold them accountable for their anticompetitive actions, but Arkansas has never been afraid to be a conservative leader for America.”

The Pharmaceutical Care Management Association promptly retaliated and filed a lawsuit challenging the legislation, calling it a "fundamentally flawed law" that they say "could shutter pharmacies, restrict access to critical medications for patients and families, increase health care costs, and eliminate jobs."

RELATED: Pharmacy middlemen didn’t break health care — the feds did

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Landry has become involved in his own legal disputes with PBMs. Landry, alongside Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, filed three separate lawsuits against CVS in June for allegedly interfering with legislation that also would have prevented PBMs from owning and simultaneously operating pharmacies.

"PBMs are not health care providers," Landry said. "They are corporate profiteers inserted into the most intimate part of your life and your health."

Although several of Trump's allies have been targeted by PBMs, criticism of the pharmaceutical industry is generally bipartisan.

Mark Cuban recently called out Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts for claiming that Big Pharma is responsible for high drug costs when, he says, PBMs are the real culprit.

"It's because PBMs corrupt healthcare," Cuban said in a post on X. "Big Pharma wishes they could set their own pricing. They don't. PBMs control formularies and manipulate prices, in exchange for providing pharma access to patients. It's how they maximize rebate revenue. In fact, 3 PBMs NEGOTIATE MORE THAN 90% OF REBATES for commercial insurance plans. That's your area of expertise, and you have done nothing."

Cuban's criticisms promptly earned the unlikely praise of some of the most prominent voices in MAGA world.

"Didn’t think I’d be RTing Mark for a while, but he’s 100% right on this issue," Donald Trump Jr. replied in a post on X.

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RFK Jr.’s controlled demolition of Big Pharma’s billion-dollar commercial scheme



Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is setting his sights on pharmaceutical companies yet again by attempting to hinder them from making commercials and advertisements for their products.

His plan is to require drugmakers to be completely transparent about the side effects of their products, because including all the side effects will increase the run time and drive up the cost of production exponentially.

And BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales couldn’t be happier, as she believes a lot of their commercials are not only ridiculous but are selling a magic pill rather than inspiring potential clients to take control of their health naturally.


One commercial for Jardiance from 2023 features an overweight cast dancing and singing a catchy tune about lowering their A1C.

“You look at that commercial, and that’s just a perfect representation of why RFK is doing this. They’ve got this high production value, they’ve got musical theater. Now, I don’t think it’s appealing, but clearly the point is to appeal to people by using this cutesy little song,” Gonzales says on “Sara Gonzales Unfiltered.”

“It masks the really brief mention of all of these dangerous side effects. You don’t hear that, you just hear the music,” she adds.

“Your skin’s going to melt off by day 90,” BlazeTV contributor Jaco Booyens jokes, adding, “You know the average price spend is close to $3 million per commercial.”

And Gonzales personally knows that the pills they’re spending so much to advertise aren’t the be-all and end-all for those struggling to get healthy.

“I used to be 100 pounds heavier. I lost the weight naturally, you can, too. And so I take personal offense to this, like, just take a pill, here. Just take a pill. Like, all of those women were obese, and they need to consider lifestyle changes rather than taking a pill just to get rid of their diabetes,” she says.

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Kennedy has Big Pharma ads in his sights — and he's not the only one mulling a crackdown



Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. noted in an op-ed last year that one of the ways President Donald Trump can make America healthy again is by reviewing direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical ad guidelines.

"The U.S. and New Zealand are the only countries that allow pharmaceutical companies to advertise directly to the public," wrote Kennedy. "News channels are filled with drug commercials, and reasonable viewers may question whether their dependence on these ads influences their coverage of health issues."

The administration is now poised to tackle this issue with policies that might make it costlier and/or more difficult for pharmaceutical giants to push their products directly to patients.

Health and Human Services press secretary Emily Hilliard told Blaze News that "Secretary Kennedy has consistently emphasized direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising must prioritize accuracy, patient safety, and the public interest — not profit margins."

"Consistent with Secretary Kennedy's public health commitments, we are exploring ways to restore more rigorous oversight and improve the quality of information presented to American consumers, who deserve nothing less than radical transparency," added Hilliard.

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Bloomberg reported that the administration is considering two policies in particular.

The first would require drugmakers to to be more forthright in their ads about the side effects of their products.

Given that pharma products often have myriad side effects, this would likely increase the run time of TV ads, thereby making them far more costly. Since a total ban on pharma direct-to-customer ads would expose the administration to litigation, this potential disincentive could have a similar effect without the consequence.

Individuals said to be familiar with the plans told Bloomberg that the second policy would entail denying pharmaceutical companies the ability to write off DTC advertising as a business expense for tax purposes.

Recent analysis from the Campaign for Sustainable Rx Pricing indicated that the average annual global spending on advertising and promotions in 2023 among the drugmakers AbbVie, Amgen, Biogen, Bristol Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, Gilead Sciences, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, and Pfizer was $1.4 billion, with Pfizer spending the most.

The advertising data firm MediaRadar reportedly found that companies spent $10.8 billion last year on direct-to-consumer pharma advertising.

Drugmakers spent a combined $729.4 million to run TV commercials for the top 10 brands in just the first three months of 2025, reported Fierce Pharma.

'The American people don’t want to see misleading and deceptive prescription drug ads on television.'

Bloomberg suggested that these potential policies could impact a key source of revenue for advertising, media, and pharmaceutical companies.

AbbVie chief commercial officer Jeff Stewart reportedly told analysts in May that if there were a crackdown on pharma ads, the company "would have to pivot," potentially focusing its advertising online rather than on mass media.

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Alex Siciliano, a spokesperson for the National Association of Broadcasters, told Bloomberg, "Restricting pharmaceutical ads would have serious consequences for stations, particularly those in smaller markets, and could raise First Amendment concerns."

Those concerned about HHS purging the airwaves of Big Pharma propaganda need not only fear initiatives from the Trump administration.

Independent Sens. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) and Angus King (Maine) introduced legislation last week that would ban drugmakers from using direct-to-consumer advertising outright, not only on TV and radio, but on social media, digital platforms, and in print as well.

"The American people are sick and tired of greedy pharmaceutical companies spending billions of dollars on absurd TV commercials pushing their outrageously expensive prescription drugs," Sanders said in a statement.

"The American people don’t want to see misleading and deceptive prescription drug ads on television. They want us to take on the greed of the pharmaceutical industry and ban these bogus ads."

An Axios-Ipsos poll conducted last year found that 59% of Americans support banning TV pharma ads.

Unlike the Trump administration's potential policies, the End Prescription Drug Ads Now Act might not survive a constitutional challenge, given that Congress is barred from making any law abridging the freedom of speech.

The independent lawmakers noted in their joint statement that HHS Secretary Kennedy is not the only relevant party who has expressed an interest in clearing the airwaves; the American Medical Association has similarly endorsed a ban.

"The widespread use of direct-to-consumer advertising by pharmaceutical companies drives up costs and doesn’t necessarily make patients healthier," said King.

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Pharmacy middlemen didn’t break health care — the feds did



Let’s stop pretending the government can fix the health care system it wrecked — by wrecking it even more.

For years, Americans have endured rising health care costs, shrinking access, and mounting frustration. Now, senators from both parties, the Federal Trade Commission, and several states want to blame pharmacy benefit managers. Before they do, it’s worth asking: Who actually caused this mess?

It wasn’t PBMs. It was Washington, D.C.

I’ve spent decades studying health care and economic systems. Central planning always fails. Yet here we go again — federal regulators scapegoating private players for a system government distorted over generations.

PBMs aren’t flawless, but they’re not the villains. They emerged as one of the few market-based responses to a government-created crisis. They operate within a system twisted by 80 years of policy failures — starting with World War II wage controls that incentivized employer-sponsored insurance. That led to the third-party payer model, which removed patients from pricing decisions.

Layer on Medicare, Medicaid, and a blizzard of mandates, and the result is clear: Government made sure health care would never again resemble a functioning market.

If we’re serious about fixing health care, we must stop repeating the failed policies that broke it in the first place.

PBMs didn’t invent this system. They were born into it. Congress established Medicare Part D, which subsidized prescription drugs without fixing the underlying distortions. PBMs stepped in to negotiate with manufacturers, manage formularies, push generics, and introduce cost controls into an otherwise bloated and opaque drug market.

They’re not perfect. But they didn’t start the fire. Government did.

Here’s the kicker: PBMs work better than almost anything else in the health care system.

University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan recently published research for the National Bureau of Economic Research showing PBMs create $145 billion in net annual value. Even after accounting for their costs, PBMs lower drug prices, help patients stick to medications, reduce hospitalizations, and cut non-drug health costs by about $40 billion each year. They also drive pharmaceutical innovation — improving uptake of new treatments and adding another $13 billion annually in future drug development.

Now compare that to the government’s record. Medicaid and Medicare leak hundreds of billions through improper payments, bloated administration, and price manipulation. Mulligan doesn’t put a figure on the waste, but other studies estimate government health care inefficiencies cost more than $1 trillion every year.

Still, no one talks about that. Instead, the FTC is grandstanding, blaming PBMs for prices the government made uncontrollable in the first place.

Washington’s real problem? It keeps designing a health care system around bureaucrats instead of patients. PBMs aren’t the issue. Bureaucracy is. The solution isn’t more scapegoating — it’s restoring freedom and responsibility to the people who use and deliver care.

RELATED: Congress must resist Big Pharma’s scheme to dismantle drug cost watchdogs

 zhuweiyi49 via iStock/Getty Images

That’s why we need unlimited health savings accounts, especially for low-income Americans on Medicaid. Don’t micromanage their health care. Give them agency. Pair it with work requirements for able-bodied Medicaid recipients — not to punish them, but to promote responsibility and reduce dependency, while still supporting those in genuine need.

The result: smarter decisions, stronger competition, lower costs, and fewer true middlemen — starting with the federal regulators and compliance officers who helped create this mess.

In a real market, PBMs will sink or swim based on value. If they deliver, they’ll thrive. If not, they’ll fail — and be replaced. That’s the beauty of market discipline. And right now, PBMs are one of the only players in health care remotely subject to it.

This assault on PBMs isn’t about health care. It’s about power. Regulators and politicians want a scapegoat for a system they helped break.

But facts still matter. PBMs reduce costs, improve access, and drive innovation. Government programs promise the same — and deliver the opposite.

If we’re serious about fixing health care, we must stop repeating the failed policies that broke it in the first place. Scrap the mandates, cut the bureaucracy, and shift power back to patients and providers. Real reform means transparency, personal responsibility, and the freedom to choose what’s best — not what Washington prescribes.

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After long suggesting ADHD has biological basis, scientists now make stunning admission



The medical establishment has a troubling track record of confidently stating things that just aren't so — as became clear to Americans who suffered injuries from supposedly safe and effective vaccines during the pandemic.

There was a damning admission in New York Times Magazine over the weekend that may inspire new doubts about the credibility of the so-called experts advising the masses on matters of health, namely that attention deficit hyperactivity disorder may not have a basis in biology after all.

That admission was not volunteered from some activist or critic but rather by the Dutch neuroscientist who apparently misled the world into thinking "A.D.H.D. is a disorder of the brain."

'No one knew exactly how the medication worked.'

In a piece titled "Have we been thinking about A.D.H.D. all wrong?" Paul Tough discussed the correlated explosion of ADHD diagnoses and Ritalin prescriptions in the 1990s — a trend, he noted, that was accompanied by criticism from parents and others concerned about the apparent campaign to load kids with methylphenidate and amphetamines.

"You didn't have to be a Scientologist to acknowledge that there were some legitimate questions about A.D.H.D.," wrote Tough. "Despite Ritalin's rapid growth, no one knew exactly how the medication worked or whether it really was the best way to treat children's attention issues."

Parents were right to be concerned.

Ritalin, Adderall, and the other highly addictive stimulants foisted upon hard-to-control American youths have a variety of undesirable side effects, both immediate and long-term.

In the short term, they can cause side effects such as bladder pain, bloody urine, an irregular heartbeat and palpitations, diarrhea, headaches, joint pain, trouble sleeping, confusion, agitation, seizures, and vomiting. In the long term, these drugs can apparently impact growth, dopamine regulation, and memory formation and retention and cause elevated blood pressure, psychosis, and mood disorders.

Over the past decade, prescriptions for stimulants to remedy imagined ADHD have skyrocketed — by 58% between 2012 and 2022. Most of the drugs dished out have been amphetamines, according to a 2023 document prepared for the Drug Enforcement Administration.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an estimated 7.1 million American children (approximately 1 in 9) aged 3-17 had ADHD diagnoses as of 2022. That's up from two million in the mid-1990s. Over half of the children currently diagnosed with ADHD receive at least one ADHD medication.

Tough noted that the medical establishment, already bullish on the ADHD craze, seized upon the initial results of the Multimodal Treatment of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Study. The study, published in 1999, suggested that Ritalin was effective.

After the Ritalin train left the station at full speed, James Swanson — who subsequently went to consult for drug companies, including the manufacturer of Adderall — and his colleagues realized that their study championing stimulant use had aged poorly.

While the children in their MTA study reported improvements after 14 months of choking down stimulants, after 36 months, their advantage had effectively disappeared such that they were expressing the same supposed symptoms as the comparison group. Years later, the same test subjects turned out to be an inch shorter than their peers.

In other words, the medical establishment was hyping and pushing addictive drugs largely on the basis of perceived short-term gains that, unlike drug dependency, faded in under two years.

"There are things about the way we do this work," Swanson, now in his 80s, told Tough, "that just are definitely wrong."

"I don't agree with people who say that stimulant treatment is good," Swanson said, after spending three decades studying the drugs. "It's not good."

Swanson is apparently not the only supposed ADHD expert now having significant doubts.

Edmund Sonuga-Barke, a researcher in psychiatry and neuroscience at King's College London, told Tough, "I've invested 35 years of my life trying to identify the causes of A.D.H.D., and somehow we seem to be farther away from our goal than we were when we started."

'We're terrified of what will happen to the kids who can't get the meds.'

"We have a clinical definition of A.D.H.D. that is increasingly unanchored from what we're finding in our science," added Sonuga-Barke.

Sonuga-Barke suggested further that ADHD is not a static, easily definable, or objectively measurable condition.

That's not what Martine Hoogman, the chair of the Enigma ADHD working group, and her team suggested in a 2017 paper funded by the National Institutes of Health and published in the Lancet Psychiatry, a peer-reviewed Elsevier journal.

After years of academic chatter about potential physical differences in the brains of people with ADHD diagnoses, Hoogman and her team compared the cortical volumes of ADHD-diagnosed subjects with those of a control group.

While Tough indicated their data showed the opposite to be true, Hoogman and her team originally stated:

We confirm, with high powered analysis, that ADHD patients truly have altered brains, i.e. that ADHD is a disorder of the brain. This is a clear message for clinicians to convey to parents and patients, which can help to reduce the stigma of ADHD and get a better understanding of ADHD. This way, it will become just as apparent as for major depressive disorder, for example, that we label ADHD as a brain disorder. Also, finding the most pronounced effects in childhood provides a relevant model of ADHD as a disorder of brain maturation delay.

Hoogman did a complete about-face when recently pressed about her statement, telling Tough, "Back then, we emphasized the differences that we found (although small), but you can also conclude that the subcortical and cortical volumes of people with A.D.H.D. and those without A.D.H.D. are almost identical."

"The A.D.H.D. neurobiology is so much more complex than that," added Hoogman.

Sonuga-Barke indicated that there is a desperation among some scientists to find evidence pointing to the biological nature of ADHD.

"In the field, we're so frightened that people will say it doesn't exist," said Sonuga-Barke. "That this is just bad parenting, from the right, or this is just a product of our postindustrial society, from the left. We have to double down because we're terrified of what will happen to the kids who can't get the meds. We've seen the impact they can have on people's lives."

'It's infuriating.'

The well-documented overdiagnosis and overtreatment of ADHD in children and adults is troubling on its face but far worse when considered in light of Sonuga-Barke's understanding that ADHD diagnoses are purely subjective and effectively unfalsifiable; Swanson's admission that ADHD treatment doesn't help in the long-run; and Hoogman's admission that there is not a biological signature for the supposed disorder.

Blaze News previously noted that the Trump administration's plan to assess the prevalence and impact of pharmaceuticals on children has some childhood psychiatrists and other prongs of the pharmaceutical industry panicking. After all, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. might cost them a source of revenue by taking a closer look at ADHD.

Kennedy noted during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Finance Committee that "15% of American youth are now on Adderall or some other [attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder] medication."

"We are not just overmedicating our children, we are overmedicating our entire population," said Kennedy. "Half the pharmaceutical drugs on earth are now sold here."

Conservative commentator Matt Walsh noted in response to the New York Times Magazine article, "ADHD is one of the greatest scams in modern history. Millions of kids have been given mind-altering drugs on the basis of a lie. Now after decades — and after shouting down and defaming those of us who knew better — they're finally starting to admit it. It's infuriating."

Author and journalist Alex Berenson tweeted, "It's unbelievable that drug companies and shrinks ('telehealth' in particular) have pushed this junk for so long."

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‘I, Pencil’ defined free trade — Trump’s tariffs are writing the sequel



On Sept. 17, 2024, thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies exploded in the hands and pockets of alleged Hezbollah operatives across Lebanon and Syria. Intelligence sources believe the Israeli government carried out the operation in retaliation for the terrorist attacks committed on Oct. 7, 2023.

Israeli agents reportedly intercepted the devices — manufactured overseas — and modified their batteries to include small amounts of explosives. However one feels about this novel form of retaliation, it serves as an explosive reminder of how critical a country’s supply lines are to national security.

Trump understands that reindustrialization is more than an economic policy. It’s a national imperative.

For decades, the global liberal economic order has operated on the assumption that nations could stretch supply chains across the world to maximize efficiency and profit — with little risk. Leonard Read’s classic essay “I, Pencil” illustrated the idea, celebrating how no single person or country could manufacture a pencil alone. It highlighted how markets, when left to coordinate production across borders, could reach extraordinary levels of efficiency.

If global trade remained stable and secure, national self-sufficiency seemed unnecessary. Countries could rely on the global market to supply even critical goods — so long as the U.S. Navy kept shipping lanes open. Under Pax Americana, the thinking went, every nation could specialize in what it did best and enjoy the shared prosperity of free trade.

The global trade system rested on the assumption that American military dominance would continue indefinitely. That belief led to some baffling choices.

A shocking share of goods essential to U.S. national security are produced almost entirely in China — including antibiotics and components used in American military hardware. The idea that a country would rely on semiconductors from its primary geopolitical rival to launch a missile defies basic strategic logic. Yet that is exactly what the United States has done.

Defense contractors have prioritized profit, operating under the assumption that global trade is both reliable and free from political risk.

While this approach always carried serious risks, the COVID-19 pandemic exposed its full recklessness. Fears of contagion and widespread labor shortages disrupted global trade, causing economic shocks and widespread shortages of consumer goods.

More urgently, the pandemic revealed that critical medical supplies — such as ventilators — were largely manufactured in China, where the virus originated. Despite this wake-up call, the United States has yet to reshore production of many essential medicines. Yet we still rely heavily on China for antibiotics and other critical pharmaceuticals.

The pandemic and Israel’s pager attack made one thing clear: The era of supply chains divorced from security concerns is over — if it ever truly existed.

The global liberal economic order operated on the assumption that American dominance would go unchallenged. Under that model, it seemed economically irrational for any country to sabotage goods it sold to the United States. Nations believed they could depend entirely on foreign production because the reach of American power would keep economic exchanges politically neutral.

But Israel didn’t manufacture the pagers that wound up in the hands of Hezbollah operatives. It simply accessed the supply chain and modified those devices. These weren’t weapons or advanced military systems. By tapping into the logistics of basic consumer electronics, Israel was able to inflict serious damage on its enemy.

This illustrates the core vulnerability of today’s trade model.

Donald Trump has long argued that Americans are getting a raw deal in the current global economic system. While the United States has embraced free trade, many of our allies — including the United Kingdom, Canada, and Israel — have maintained protective tariffs.

Meanwhile, China has benefited from open access to U.S. markets despite its use of centralized planning, currency manipulation, and widespread intellectual property theft.

Trump has made clear that his goal is to reverse this imbalance. For both economic and national security reasons, he intends to use tariffs to secure better trade agreements and bring as much manufacturing as possible back to the United States.

Some disgruntled mainstream conservatives — particularly at publications like National Review — have joined leftist politicians and media voices in sounding the alarm over efforts to build an economic order that prioritizes U.S. interests. For many neoconservatives, free trade has become a kind of orthodoxy. They treat economic predictability — even within a broken system — as more important than restoring national sovereignty.

NeverTrump conservatives often dismiss the president’s trade agenda as outdated or uninformed. They mock his focus on reviving the American middle class. Among the D.C. elite, working- and middle-class Americans from “fly-over” states are often treated as relics of the past — easily replaced by foreign labor in a gig-based, service economy.

But Trump understands that reindustrialization is more than an economic policy. It’s a national imperative.

Tariffs once funded nearly the entire federal government. Now, Trump is attempting something unprecedented: using tariffs strategically within a modern, globalized economy. This may ultimately fail — but it’s clear to anyone paying attention that the current model is collapsing. Staying on the same path leads only to a slower, more orderly decline.

Political theorist Niccolò Machiavelli warned that the boldest reforms bring the fiercest opposition. A leader who proposes a new system will face resistance from all who benefited under the old one and enjoy only lukewarm support from those uncertain about the future.

If Trump succeeds, he will have demonstrated vision and resilience in the face of a system deeply hostile to him. If he fails, history may view him as the man who delivered an already-ailing economy to an early grave.

What remains clear is this: Every nation that hopes to endure must learn how to secure its supply chains. That process will demand serious reindustrialization. The era of security-neutral trade is ending fast — and those guided by short-term indicators instead of long-term national interest may not survive what comes next.

Drug prescribers fret as RFK Jr. investigates kids' use of amphetamines, SSRIs



The prospect the Trump administration might take action that would see multitudes of children taken off addictive, overprescribed, and potentially dangerous drugs has some childhood psychiatrists and other prongs of the pharmaceutical industry both panicking and defending select drugs.

President Donald Trump established the Make America Health Again Commission last week, tasking Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. with assessing the prevalence and impact of antidepressants, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, and other pharmaceuticals on children. Trump also directed Kennedy to assess "the threat that potential overutilization of medication, certain food ingredients, certain chemicals, and certain other exposures pose to children with respect to chronic inflammation or other established mechanisms of disease."

Kennedy, the chair of the commission who initially endorsed Trump partly in hopes of helping make American children healthy again, reportedly made clear at his first meeting with HHS staff on Tuesday that he fully intends to execute the president's directive.

An employee who attended the meeting told NBC News that Kennedy signaled he would take aim at the possible overmedication of children as well as the risks of antidepressants.

Kennedy has made no secret of his desire to officially investigate the adverse and avoidable impacts that pharmaceuticals might have on children.

The HHS secretary noted, for instance, during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Finance Committee that "15% of American youth are now on Adderall or some other [attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder] medication. Even higher percentages are on SSRIs and benzos. We are not just overmedicating our children, we are overmedicating our entire population. Half the pharmaceutical drugs on earth are now sold here."

A 2024 study published in the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics found that between 2016 and 2022, the number of Americans ages 12 to 17 with an antidepressant prescription shot up 43%. The researchers noted further that "antidepressant dispensing to adolescents and young adults was rising before the COVID-19 outbreak and rose 63.5% faster afterward."

A 2021 study published in the medical journal JAMA Network Open found evidence of ADHD overdiagnosis and overtreatment in children and adults — especially problematic because the drugs often prescribed are amphetamines, which have numerous side effects and are highly addictive.

The health secretary added during the confirmation hearing that prescription drugs are the third-leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer, and they do not appear overall to be making America healthier.

The Trump administration's promise of investigations, transparency, and greater caution around certain drugs appears to have some prescription writers in the medical establishment worried.

'Americans have lost confidence in the medical apparatus that let us down during the COVID pandemic.'

A number of physicians and so-called psychiatric experts recently suggested to The Hill that they are more concerned that children might lose access to psychotropic drugs and other substances than they are worried about overmedication.

Lisa Fortuna, chair of the American Psychiatric Association's Council on Children, Adolescents, and their Families, said, "There is some concern, even more so in the field, that many children with depression and mental health disorders do not get access to the mental health services that they need, and that includes the comprehensive treatment that we would recommend."

Tami Benton, president of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, complained to The Hill about Kennedy's previous suggestions that selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors are addictive and may have something to do with school shootings — a possibility Kennedy indicated might warrant a National Institutes of Health override of medical privacy rules to verify.

Benton suggested these suggestions "don't address the reality of psychiatric treatment" and claimed that "these medications are not addictive."

The Mayo Clinic indicated that missing doses or abruptly going off SSRIs — which have various side effects including anxiety and sexual dysfunction — can cause "withdrawal-like symptoms," a consequence associated with addictive substances that are the result of the physical dependence users can often develop when taking the drugs.

When asked about its investigation into SSRIs and other drugs, White House spokesman Kush Desai told NBC News, "Americans have lost confidence in the medical apparatus that let us down during the COVID pandemic and oversaw an unprecedented explosion in chronic disease."

"The Trump-Vance administration will continue to review current best practices and health care bodies to implement needed reforms," added Desai.

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