The Uncomfortable Truth MAHA Is Exposing About US Healthcare

InnovationHealthcareThe Uncomfortable Truth MAHA Is Exposing About US HealthcareBySachin H. Jain,Contributor.Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I cover transformation and innovation across the health care industry.Follow AuthorJun 03, 2026, 12:16am EDT--:-- / --:--This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.A woman holds a sign reading "Make America Healthy Again" at a press conference with US Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr (Photo by Oliver Contreras / AFP) (Photo by OLIVER CONTRERAS/AFP via Getty Images)AFP via Getty ImagesAmerican healthcare has a strange relationship with prevention.We celebrate it rhetorically. We promote it at conferences. We publish studies about it. We devote entire departments to population health and wellness. Yet structurally, we continue to finance the opposite.The Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement led by Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and President Donald Trump has generated intense debate about nutrition, chronic disease, food systems, pharmaceuticals, and public health. Whatever one’s views of its politics, the movement has succeeded in drawing attention to a contradiction that healthcare leaders have spent decades attempting to reconcile. We know far more about preventing chronic disease than our healthcare system is organized to act upon.The evidence supporting lifestyle interventions—including nutrition, physical activity, sleep, stress management, social connectedness, and avoidance of harmful substances—is overwhelming. These factors influence many of the conditions that account for the largest share of healthcare spending, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, hypertension, and many forms of cancer. In some cases, lifestyle interventions rival the benefits of pharmaceutical therapies. In others, they enhance the effectiveness of medications such as GLP-1s. In ma...