There’s a narrative out there that we’re incredibly unhealthy in the United States. This is echoed by the director of the Department of Health and Human Services on a daily basis. The motto of HHS has become “Make America Healthy Again.” We’re living in a time when there’s no reliance on actual information, and this feels no different.

The problem with narratives like “America has the highest rates of chronic disease in the world,” is that people believe them, without questioning them, whereas those spreading the narratives seem free to say whatever they want without any limits. In this case, there are certainly measures showing that Americans have a high prevalence of chronic conditions. Estimates are that over 70% of Americans report having at least one chronic condition. But is this the highest in the world, as asserted by Kennedy on a regular basis? I actually don’t know, because I don’t know how to compare the data. The rates of chronic conditions from other countries are reported in a survey system that doesn’t include the United States. So differences in methodology likely account for at least some of the differences between the results.

It is certainly true that we spend a lot on health care. But that could be because we have more expensive health care, and more access to it, than other countries. Using access to health care as a measure of health seems a bit backward. If we make it easier for people to get health care, and we advertise it on television over and over and over, should we be surprised that Americans seek it more than other countries? Is that a bad thing? Maybe, but maybe it’s a great thing.

Where I struggle with the narrative is that while Kennedy says he wants us to be healthy again, I don’t know when that was? It certainly wasn’t when my grandmother was a kid, because I think she was one of two (of eight total) children who lived into their teens in her family. Eight kids and only two lived to their teens. That doesn’t sound like a health environment I want to go back to. Life expectancy has been steadily rising in the United States over the last half century. There was a dip when COVID was at its peak, but it returned to pre-COVID levels and has gotten better since then. We live longer and we have more access to treatments than we had. So what, exactly, are we supposed to return to?

It souds like a lot of noise to me.