At a House Appropriations Committee hearing on Wednesday, Rep. Michael Simpson (R-ID) questioned Sec. RFK Jr. about Indian Health Services.
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00:00Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Secretary, for being here, and thanks for taking on what is a huge task.
00:10You've done that before in your history, and I look forward to, you know, most of the people I talk to are in favor of Maha and making America healthy again.
00:20I agree with a lot of the things you've said, some of the things I question, want to see more studies on, and there's probably a couple in there that I might disagree with.
00:27But that's okay. Opening this debate of how we can make America healthy again is very important.
00:34Let me ask a couple questions. I chair the Interior Committee that funds Indian Health Services, which is in your department.
00:40I noticed in your opening statement you want to maintain the level of funding for Indian Health Services to keep the promises that we've made to our Native American, Alaska Natives.
00:52That's not just a promise. That's a legal obligation we have with those. Those are treaty rights.
00:56So we've been doing a great deal, in my bill, increasing funding for Indian Health Services.
01:03We also did something that was called forward appropriation so that they have appropriated a year in advance
01:10because we found that during shutdowns and those kind of things, they weren't protected like other health organizations were and stuff.
01:17So your skinny budget, and I don't, I haven't seen your full budget yet, do you maintain that forward appropriation for Indian Health Services?
01:27Yeah, yes, Congressman, you know, I want to point out, I spent 20% of my career working on tribal issues,
01:36representing the tribes in treaty negotiations and litigation against big polluters and the extractive industry and others.
01:46I was one of the founding editors of Indian Country Today, which is the largest Indian newspaper in Indian country.
01:55And my, it's been an issue that I've been committed to my whole life.
02:00I fought successfully to, to, to exempt the Indian Health Service from the probationary freezes from the fork in the road,
02:14the early retirement from the rifts and from all of the downsizing.
02:18And I also made an opportunity that people who at my agency who lost their jobs in other parts of the agency from the rifts, et cetera,
02:28could transfer to the Indian Health Service because Indian Health Service chronically understaffed.
02:33It's very, very difficult to find competent personnel who will move to Indian country or to distant locations.
02:40And I'm committed to protecting it.
02:43I'm committed to working with you to make sure that, um, that we can finally make this work.
02:50Our population that is not only probably, you know, among the most aggrieved in our history,
02:55but also a population that suffers more from chronic disease that have the, as the shortest lifespan,
03:02the highest rates of diabetes, the highest rates of alcoholism of any other population.
03:08And, um, and, you know, one of my big priorities will be getting good food,
03:13high quality food and traditional foods onto the reservation because processed food for American Indians is poison.
03:20Yep.
03:20And getting, they're finding that the way to attack diabetes on reservations was have the highest rate is by going back to their traditional foods.
03:29Yeah.
03:29I mean, I'll, I'll say one thing.
03:31The Pima Indians were most, were blue zone in Arizona.
03:35Longest lived people on the continent.
03:38Um, today they're among the shortest lived.
03:40I think the lifespan of around 47 years old, the highest rate of diabetes, second in the world.
03:46About 80% of adults are diabetic, have a chronic obesity right across the border in Mexico.
03:55There are Pima Indians who are still long lived, have no diabetes, no heart disease, no obesity,
04:01because they're not being fed ultra processed food.
04:03And ultra processed food is a genocide on the American Indian, and we have to end it.
04:08Yeah, I agree.
04:10One other subject that I want to talk about is the reorganization of NIH into fewer institutes.
04:16Uh, there are some institutes that are concerned that they're going to be left out of this, uh, reorganization.
04:22The Division of Oral Health, uh, at the CDC is concerned about, uh, the lack of focus on oral health.
04:30Uh, will you commit that preserving the congressionally appropriated funding and upholding the autonomy of the National Institutes of Dental Craniofacial Research
04:41and other institutes until Congress completes a thorough review of the NIH restructuring?
04:46I don't know what the OMB budget says about dental health, but I can tell you that I am deeply committed to dental health.
04:58There are so much new science out there that shows how dental health is intricately related to health in the rest of the body,
05:08to the microbiome, to the brain health.
05:10So, and I, you know, we want to do those kind of studies to make sure that we understand that,
05:16and we need to make a big commitment to dental health.
05:19I appreciate that, and I look forward to working with you on that and making sure that, you know,
05:23most diseases can actually, uh, actually, uh, express themselves in the oral cavity first.
05:28Yes.
05:28It can be detected there.
05:29Uh, I am concerned about the fluoride issue.
05:32Uh, I've seen the benefits, having been a practicing dentist for 22 years.
05:35I just noticed this morning that the FDA brings action to remove ingestible fluoride prescription drug products for children from the market.
05:43And I, as I'm reading through this, I want to see some of these studies,
05:46but it says the best way to prevent cavities in children is by avoiding excessive sugar intake and good dental hygiene, obvious.
05:53Then it says for the same reason that fluoride may kill bacteria on teeth,
05:57it may also kill intestinal bacteria important to children's health.
06:00I would tell you, you don't prevent cavities by fluoride killing the bacteria in the mouth.
06:06What it does is make the enamel more resistant to decay.
06:10So I want to see the studies on this and, and where we're headed with this.
06:14And I will tell you that if you are successful in banning fluoride,
06:18I noticed you graduated Utah and Florida, I think, for, for banning it.
06:23That's up to them.
06:24They can do what they want.
06:25But we better put a lot more money into dental education because we're going to need a whole lot more dentists.
06:29I think that, you know, Marty McCary's concern with ingestible fluoride
06:34is that the emerging science shows the benefits of fluoride to cares and to cavity prevention
06:44comes from topical exposures rather than it was once thought that it was systemic,
06:50that if you ingested it, that the benefit came from that.
06:53We now know that virtually all the benefit is from topical and we can get that through mouthwashes.
07:00We can get through fluoridated toothpastes.
07:03The National Toxicity Program issued a report in August, a meta review of all the science that now exists on fluoride
07:10and showed a direct inverse correlation between fluoride exposure, dose related, and lower IQ.
07:17It's an issue that we have to all be concerned with.
07:20We want a high IQ kid right now.
07:22Mr. Hoyer.
07:23I appreciate that.
07:24I look forward to working with you on it.
07:25Okay.