I honestly don’t know what direction things are going anymore.

Every day feels like we’re being force-fed a bigger dose of stupidity—or worse, intentional sabotage—when it comes to education and health care in this country.

The Rise of Anti-Science Leadership

Let’s start with the Secretary of Health and Human Services, a man who seems allergic to anything that isn’t a conspiracy theory. For God’s sake, we’re on the verge of a measles epidemic because this nut bar thinks vaccines are bad.

The MMR vaccine has been dragged for decades thanks to a faked study claiming a link between vaccines and autism. But now his boss—the Orangutan-in-Chief—has decided that Tylenol causes autism. Small problem: autism was described in the early 1900s, while Tylenol debuted in 1953.

Quacks in Charge

And if that isn’t enough for the world’s saddest carnival of anti-evidence madness, here comes Dr. Oz. Yes, that Dr. Oz. Pusher of every quack remedy known to man. And now somehow he’s running CMS—the very agency responsible for Medicare and Medicaid.

Destroying the Workforce

Linda McMahon is pushing a reclassification of professions that basically labels anything short of a doctor as “non-professional” for loan access. The ripple effect is obvious: making it harder for NPs, PAs, PTs, OTs, and speech therapists to get funding means fewer people entering the workforce.

And that, my friends, is how you break a healthcare system.

The Political Snowball

Meanwhile, the Affordable Care Act is still a punching bag. And now we’re watching a deliberate effort to dismantle what little good it did.

Layer all of this with a Health and Human Services secretary who fires ACIP members and replaces them with conspiracy theorists. Add a president who regurgitates random medical advice from people who wouldn’t know evidence-based practice if it slapped them in the face.

Where This Is Going

At the current rate, healthcare in this country is going to be fucked up beyond repair in a few years.

We already lack universal healthcare because insurance companies have a massive financial interest in making sure we never have it.

Final Thoughts

As someone who spent over three decades in this field, I cannot believe the ham-fisted, reckless way healthcare is being disassembled.

Effective healthcare keeps my mother alive. Your mother alive. Your dog alive.

And at some point, people need to stand up and say: Enough.