Kennedy appeared before a Senate committee for the second consecutive day regarding his nomination for secretary of health and human services.
In a fiery exchange with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Jan. 30, President Donald Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. chastised the lawmaker for accepting money from pharmaceutical companies.
Sanders is the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) ranking member.
On Jan. 30, Kennedy answered questions from the panel after appearing before the Senate Committee on Finance for his first confirmation hearing on Jan. 29.
During the exchange, Sanders said that America’s health care system is “broken” due to “some of the reasons that Kennedy indicated,” which includes chronic disease and the life expectancy in the United States that is lower than countries “far poorer than we are.”
Sanders asked Kennedy if, as HHS secretary, he would guarantee health care coverage to “every single American.”
Kennedy replied that he intends to “make America healthier than other countries in the world.”
“Right now, we’re the sickest.”
He went on to suggest that Sanders and other members of the committee were allowing their financial interests to influence their positions on public health policy.
“You know, the problem of corruption is not just in the federal agencies. It’s in Congress too,” Kennedy said. “Almost all the members of this panel are accepting—including yourself—are accepting millions of dollars from the pharmaceutical industry, protecting their interests.”
Sanders denied the accusation.
“I ran for president like you. I got millions of contributions. They did not come from the executives,” Sanders said. He said that the donations came from workers and that “not one nickel of PAC money” from the pharmaceutical industry helped fund his campaign.
In 2020, Sanders ran for the Democrat presidential nomination that was ultimately secured by now-former President Joe Biden.
Kennedy noted that Sanders was the single largest recipient in Congress of pharmaceutical financial support in 2020.
Sanders denied and then told Kennedy, “You have not answered my last question.”
According to Open Secrets, Sanders was the top recipient of money from pharmaceuticals and health products in 2019–2020 in the Senate at $1,417,633.
