by Aspen Coriz-Romero

Photo courtesy of:  Marco Verch (CCNull)

Shortly following the November election Donald Trump announced his pick of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Service– overseeing everything from food safety and medical research to public welfare programs. This nomination has brought pushback from physicians and health experts as Kennedy not only lacks experience, but has an extensive history of promoting dangerous misinformation and baseless conspiracies regarding vaccines, seed oils, fluoridated tap water, and more. 

Kennedy’s penchant for spreading misinformation even extends to the Pentagon budget. “We’re spending more just on diabetes than our entire military budget, and nobody’s asking ‘why is this happening?’ ” Kennedy falsely proclaimed early last year on his podcast. 

The truth is that US spending on diabetes is just about a third of the bloated war machine budget. Diabetes cost an estimated $306.6 billion in direct medical costs in 2022. For that fiscal year, Congress passed a $778 billion Pentagon and war budget through the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). More recently, Congress appropriated a topline of $895.2 billion in the 2025 NDAA. 

Even if you include indirect costs like missed work, the cost of treating diabetes was $412.9 billion, still far short of the Pentagon budget. And of course, for a fair comparison, you’d then have to include the indirect costs of the our war machine– which might include the hundreds of billions of dollars in veterans’ programs, costs for environmental cleanup, and on and on. There’s clearly no contest. 

Not only is Kennedy’s assertion about the dollars factually incorrect– so is the implication that we should be spending more on the Pentagon than on diabetes treatments. 

About 11.6% of the US population has diabetes, or about 38.4 million people of all ages. Meaning, many people know or love someone that lives with the condition. My grandma is a diabetic and my great-great grandma passed due to diabetes-related complications– but like 1 in 5 of all US adults with diabetes today she did not know she had it. 

Diabetes, especially Type 2, is a stigmatized condition and disparities in care often disproportionately hurt underserved communities. Although lifestyle and diet have an influence, there’s many factors such as family history and social determinants like race/ethnicity, locality, income, and age. Nearly 1 in 3 people 65 and older has diabetes.

As pharmaceutical industries and private insurers continue to put profits over people, Americans face coverage barriers when accessing care and medication. Within the past decade spending on insulin has tripled, increasing from $8 billion in 2012 to $22.3 billion in 2022– even though the prevalence of diabetes has been consistent in recent years. An estimated 7.7 million people rely on insulin to manage their diabetes. The hormone plays an essential role in regulating blood sugar levels, but many struggle to afford it.

There’s a correlation between expanding militarism and worsening health outcomes: when a country’s spending on their military increases, their spending on public health decreases. It speaks volumes that when compared with nine other high-income countries the US ranks last in health care– but simultaneously spends more on the Pentagon than the next nine countries spend on their militaries combined. 

Although Kennedy has yet to be confirmed, Senate Republicans jumped to establish a “Make America Healthy Again” caucus to implement his agenda– which feels like blatant hypocrisy as the administration rushed to freeze spending* to vital programs like food stamps and Medicaid in order to secure funds for Trump’s billionaire tax cuts and ruthless mass deportation plans. 

If policymakers wanted to actually improve the health of Americans they would be making larger investments in expanding food security and healthcare programs– not the Pentagon

* As of publication, it is being widely reported that the administration has rescinded their spending freeze in the face of multiple lawsuits. 

Aspen Coriz-Romero is the New Mexico Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies.