Project 2025 - 14. Dept. of Health and Human Services (HHS) - Part 1

Jumping ahead again...

The HHS section of Project 2025 is written by Roger Severino, a former trial attorney and tapped by Donald Trump to be Director of the Office of Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in 2017. He left that position in 2021. The Human Rights Campaign described Severino as a "radical anti-LGBTQ activist," and in an op-ed co-written by former U.S. Senator Jim DeMint, Severino said that "transgender rights supporters see sex as 'merely a placeholder' assigned at birth." He is quoted as saying his anti-LGBT views are "actually decent and honorable beliefs based not on any sort of hatred but, in fact, out of love. It’s a vision of human flourishing, people who believe in marriage and believe in a biblical view of human sexuality." He was allegedly fired by President Joe Biden.

Project 2025 - Mandate for Leadership - The Conservative Promise

Severino feels that HHS has "lost its way" due to a focus on "promoting equity...[in] populations sharing a particular characteristic, including race, sexuality, gender ID, [and] ethnicity," thus leading to a lower life-expectancy in the U.S. post-COVID, emphasizing that the white population dropped 7% in "just one year."

Let's break this down.

According to the CDC, the age of life-expectancy (men and women) in the United States increased 1.1% to 77.5 years, however the infant mortality rate also increased 3.1%. This may be due to the lack of women's access to healthcare in the wake of the overturning of Roe v. Wade in June, 2022. We still have not reached pre-pandemic levels of 78.8 years, but this is to be expected after losing over 1.2 million people from the COVID-19 virus. There are also wide racial disparities in the life expectancy in the United States.

Severino lists 5 goals/points for how to move forward at the Dept. of Health and Human Services when considering budget and workforce cuts. They are as follows:

1. Protecting life (at conception), accepting "biological realities" (not ideology), and ensuring religious freedoms

2. Returning to a "robust and free competition" when it comes to healthcare providers, including removing "irrational Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement schemes," and the "overconsumption of health care," limiting "consumer shopping" (i.e. second opinions and ER visits)

3. Repealing policies that do not focus on families comprised of a married mother and father and subsidize single-motherhood—fathers, he says "insulate their children from physical and sexual abuse, poverty, [and] teen pregnancy"

4. Questioning the definition of "public health emergency," Severino wants the next pandemic to take a completely different approach than the COVID-19 lockdowns. He blames pandemic deaths on isolation and "vaccine-related mass firings," not the virus, itself. Bureaucrats like Anthony Fauci, Severino says, misled the public and withheld information, and that the best disinfectant is "light."

5. Instituting an absolute firewall between all National Institutes of Health, including the CDC and FDA, and any public-private partnerships with corporate agencies like pharmaceutical companies. These departments receive about half their funding from the U.S. government, and half from “user fees”—applications for new products, foods, drugs, etc., used in the approval/disapproval [process before going to market.

   

CENTER FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION (CDC)

Severino blames the CDC for incompetence during the COVID-19 pandemic, for botched tests and for misjudging the transmissibility and lethality of the virus (which he ironically downplayed in point #4 above).

I find the arrogance of his unscientifically-trained take astounding, considering the process for determining transmissibility and lethality of a new virus, along with appropriate vaccines and testing, is always evolving in the first weeks, months, and years after discovery. The first polio epidemic in the U.S. occurred in 1894, however a vaccine wouldn't become available until 1955. The measles virus wasn't fully identified and isolated until 1954. After vaccines became widely available in 1963, measles would eventually become eradicated in the year 2000. Due to vaccine disinformation, measles is back in the U.S. and spreading through (mostly pediatric) unvaccinated communities.

Severino wants the two functions of the CDC--collecting epidemiological data and notifying and making recommendations to the public--to be split into two separate agencies with a firewall in between. Currently all communication with the public has been cut off. He assesses that the social costs far outweigh the health costs.

"For example, how much risk mitigation is worth the price of shutting down churches on the holiest day of the Christian calendar...?" - Project 2025

Severino states that much of what the CDC does should be outsourced to private companies, such that they are not "prescribing," instead "informing" the nation. And above all, he says, the CDC should not recommend abortions.

"It should ensure that it is not promoting abortion as healthcare. It should fund studies into the risks and complications of abortion and ensure that it corrects and does not promote misinformation regarding the comparative health and psychological benefits of childbirth versus the health and psychological risks of intentionally taking a human life through abortion." - Project 2025

Severino uses this justification as a reason why testing vaccines on fetal cells should be "prohibited as a matter of law and policy," stating "there is never any justification for ending a child's life as a part of research."

This is a highly presumptive and inaccurate statement. There are no abortions happening for the purpose of research. Not one.

Severino also wants to limit what he calls "abortion tourism"--traveling across state lines for healthcare--and wants all abortions (which are voluntarily reported by state) to be reported, including the reason, fetus' gestational age, and the mother's state of residence. As a result of these numbers, states providing more abortion to women seeking healthcare will lose funding. All data collection on gender identity, on the other hand, should "immediately end."

FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION (FDA)

Severino, again, wants there to be a firewall between Big Pharma and the FDA, because generic drugs cost less than their name-brand counterparts. However, after Donald Trump's Inauguration Day reversal of Joe Biden's initiatives aimed at reducing prescription drug costs for Medicare and Medicaid recipients, I question whether the price of drugs is really a big concern for the new Administration.

Severino quickly discusses laboratory-developed testing and drug shortages, focusing in on letting manufacturers compete based on facility quality and package coding.

Severino then brings up the abortion pill, Mifepristone, used for chemical abortions at home for up to 10 weeks’ gestation. He cites that there have been 26 deaths in the past 20 years associated with the pill (though with no specific citation), and "hundreds of thousands to millions of babies whose lives have been unjustly taken," but fails to mention the increase in maternal mortality since Roe was overturned. Severino asks that the FDA reverse its approval of chemical abortion drugs because it "failed to abide by its legal obligation to protect the health, safety, and welfare of girls and women."

With the intent of the health, safety, and welfare of girls and women in mind, I think it needs mentioning here that in the State of Texas, if a person performs an abortion on a minor female who does not have a "life-threatening condition," the penalty is at least 2 years in jail, with a maximum of 20 years. The rapist who impregnated the minor female would have the same jail term as the doctor who performed the abortion. In Alabama, performing an abortion is a Class A felony, whereas incest and sexual abuse is a Class C.

Severino wants to enforce the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to require inspections and compliance of all facilities that manufacture Mifepristone, and remove the ability to order pills by mail and administer via telehealth.

Severino also notes that due to religious restrictions, many families choose not to receive the chickenpox, Hepatitis, and MMR vaccines because they were derived by testing on fetal cells.

It's important to note here, however, these are not continually tested on new sources of fetal tissue. The origin of the fetal tissue was from two terminated pregnancies in the 1960s, from which the cells have continued to grow in a lab and are used to test new vaccines. While the original cells came as a result of two abortions, there is no abortion mill out there pumping out tissue for medical research.

NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH (NIH)

Severino opens by discussing "human animal chimera experiments," where human cells are transplanted into "non-human animals" in order to cure diseases, create treatments, and even grow human organs for transplantation, alleviating the critical shortage and long waitlists. He also mentions that the "NIH was responsible for paying for research in aborted body parts."

"When an application involving human fetal tissue research is submitted to NIH, the AOR's signature certifies that researchers using these tissues are in compliance with the PHS Act. The statute specifically prohibits any person from knowingly acquiring, receiving, or transferring any human fetal tissue for valuable consideration. The term "valuable consideration" is a concept similar to profit and does not include reasonable payment for costs associated with the collection, processing, preservation, storage, quality control, or transportation of these tissues. Violation of this statute carries criminal penalties that apply to both those that supply and those that acquire human fetal tissue." -- NIH

Severino says using fetal tissue is immoral and obsolete, however unlike adult tissue it can rapidly proliferate in a lab and provide crucial research for things like neurological disorders, infectious diseases, and developmental disorders due to its "relatively undifferentiated state." Severino does, however, specify "elective abortions," though he recommends "discarded surgical tissue and adult stem cells."

Severino wants to reconvene a new National Council on Bioethics to "assess whether the ends justify the means when it comes to the promise of therapies and cures."

Translation: is your child's cancer treatment worth an abortion?

He also questions things like cloning (still very controversial), and three-parent embryo creation (still very rare).

Severino wants the NIH to get out of the business of making money off pharma, for things like the COVID-19 vaccine and even the beer and liquor industry. And while oversight is necessary when private and government entities are linked, it should be noted that the scientists who did the research for the COVID-19 vaccine worked for the NIH, and should be paid for their work. This is often a gray area that needs more transparency.

Lastly, Severino takes aim at "woke policies" like the #MeToo movement, which he says forced the NIH to attend only scientific conferences with an equal number of female panelists. "NIH has been at the forefront in publishing junk gender science," he says, and the NIH office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion should be abolished.

CENTERS FOR MEDICARE AND MEDICAID SERVICES (CMS)

While Severino acknowledges that Medicare and Medicaid help many people, he refers to them as "runaway entitlements." He asks that doctors and beneficiaries gain control of their medical care, but also that, like with most federal departments in the news these days, they "reduce waste, fraud, and abuse." He emphasizes that the government needs to protect doctors providing coverage under Medicare and Medicaid without them being "compelled to provide sex changes."

Severino walks through basic Medicare reform, including Part D, codifying price transparency regulations, but also removing the Medicare Shared Savings Program and Inflation Reduction Act, enacted under the Obama and Biden Administrations.

For Medicaid, Severino wants reformed financing, including per capita caps. This would mean a limit to how much the federal government would pay a Medicaid beneficiary, transferring the responsibility to the states. The states, in turn would have to implement stricter eligibility criteria, eliminate optional benefits like dental and eye care, and cut programs for vulnerable populations like low-income children and people with disabilities. For their part, Severino says, the states would be incentivized to root out waste, fraud, and abuse.

Is there an echo in here?

CMS would incorporate "work incentives for able bodied [beneficiaries]," and add time limits and lifetime caps to benefits. So when you're out of money, you're out of care.

President Obama signed major health care legislation into law - The NY Times

AFFORDABLE CARE ACT AND PRIVATE HEALTH INSURANCE

Severino argues that the Affordable Care Act (or "Obamacare") has made health insurance more expensive. However, for those living below a certain income level for their family size, it's often much cheaper or even free, whereas before they might not have had any insurance at all.

I say this as someone whose children were once on the Healthy Montana Kids program, which covered all medical, pharmacy, dental, and vision. In order to qualify we needed to make 143% of the federal poverty level. For a family of 5 that is just over $52,000/year (2024). Because at the time we qualified, we paid nothing for our kids' health insurance, a huge savings for our family.

Severino continues to talk about the prices of private health insurance and the burden on Americans' pocketbooks, but explains it away with things like "non-subsidized market regulatory relief," avoiding the very large elephant in the room that is socialized medicine.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Project 2025

Ellie is an author, editor, and owner of Red Pencil Transcripts, and works with filmmakers, podcasts, and journalists all over the world. She lives with her family just outside of New York City, and is represented by Vicki Marsdon at High Spot Literary.