That is the story of two Republican doctor-senators named Invoice.
One among them, as majority chief from 2003 to 2007, helped a self-described “compassionate conservative” Republican president go a Medicare prescription drug plan and the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Reduction (PEPFAR), “the largest dedication by any nation to handle a single illness in historical past.”
The opposite, as a member of the Senate Finance Committee, voted to ship Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination as secretary of Well being and Human Companies to the Senate flooring. It was a 14-13 vote, so his was an important “aye” that allowed a conspiracy theorist, disinformation spreader and anti-vaxxer to grow to be the highest public well being official in America. He already has defunded world-changing mRNA vaccine analysis, imposed main restrictions on entry to COVID vaccines amid a surging variant of the virus and triggered a disaster on the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention.
“The firewall between science and beliefs is totally damaged down,” Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, former director of the CDC’s Nationwide Middle for Immunization and Respiratory Ailments, mentioned Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” He was a part of the stunning CDC management exodus final week after the Trump administration pressured out CDC Director Susan Monarez.
The trajectory from coronary heart and lung transplant surgeon Invoice Frist of Tennessee to gastroenterologist Invoice Cassidy of Louisiana is emblematic of the darkish Republican Celebration journey on science and well being — from the Bush household to the Trump household, from American greatness to self-defeating denialism on all the pieces from vaccines to most cancers analysis.
There are 4 medical doctors within the Senate: Cassidy, orthopedic surgeon John Barrasso of Wyoming, obstetrician-gynecologist Roger Marshall of Kansas and ophthalmologist Rand Paul of Kentucky. All are Republicans and all voted in February to verify Kennedy.
Eleven of the 17 medical medical doctors within the Home are Republicans, and all of them voted for the almost $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts within the huge tax-and-spending regulation that Trump signed on July 4. So did the 4 dentists within the Home, all of them Republicans. The American Dental Assn. endorsed three of them. The fourth is Arizona’s Paul Gosar, a prime competitor with Kennedy within the medical disinformation house whose siblings have made advertisements urging voters to reject him.
Frist was the one physician within the Senate when he served. After leaving the Senate in early 2007, he joined the Bipartisan Coverage Middle, the place he’s a senior fellow and co-chair of its Well being Undertaking. He has been on the board of administrators of the Nature Conservancy since 2015, and was elected to a three-year time period as international board chair in 2022.
Frist has sharply criticized the Medicaid cuts handed into regulation this yr, saying they threaten rural hospitals and public well being. Final spring, accepting a 2025 Earth Award from Time Journal, he mentioned local weather well being is essential to human well being, and he urged a private strategy to lift American consciousness. He usually describes his environmental and well being missions as inseparable. “Planetary well being is human well being. Let’s lead with science, unity, and urgency,” he posted on X on Earth Day.
Good luck with that, not less than within the quick time period. The identical new regulation that cuts Medicaid additionally cuts funds for renewable power tasks and incentives, with conservationists predicting extra air pollution, fewer jobs and better power prices because of this. Solely three Republican senators bucked the social gathering tide on that invoice, and Paul was the one physician amongst them. His breaking level was a provision elevating the U.S. debt restrict to $5 trillion — not Medicaid or clear power cuts affecting well being.
Cassidy, in fact, voted for it. And when Monarez discovered herself in Kennedy’s crosshairs over vaccines, Cassidy privately intervened for her, which backfired. Now, having didn’t spare America this nightmare when he may have, the senator is threatening “oversight” by the well being committee he chairs and making an attempt to get a Sept. 18 assembly of unqualified Kennedy-appointed vaccine “advisors” postponed.
That is skinny gruel, particularly from a health care provider as soon as dedicated to public well being and science writ giant. Cassidy co-founded a clinic that gave free dental and medical care to the working uninsured, his web site says, and created a public-private partnership that vaccinated 36,000 kids for hepatitis without charge to their households. Through the Biden presidency, he voted for bipartisan gun security and infrastructure payments and the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act to bolster the U.S. semiconductor business. He was additionally considered one of 5 Republicans voting for a small-business COVID reduction invoice.
Much more notably, within the Senate impeachment trial after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, Cassidy voted to convict Trump of “incitement of rebel.” “Our Structure and our nation is extra essential than anyone individual. I voted to convict President Trump as a result of he’s responsible,” he mentioned then. The Louisiana Republican Celebration censured him the identical day.
Now working for his third time period, Cassidy is already dealing with main challengers who don’t have that baggage. They embody state Treasurer John Fleming, a former congressman who labored for Trump within the White Home, and public service commissioner Eric Skrmetta, who chaired all three of Trump’s presidential campaigns in Louisiana.
Fleming has mentioned Cassidy’s vote to convict Trump failed the folks of Louisiana. And that’s the issue with immediately’s Republican Celebration. The reality is that since that courageous vote, Cassidy has failed all People. He has additionally assured that his legacy would be the wreckage of our as soon as world-class public well being and medical analysis applications.
On the opposite facet, there may be the 314 Motion group that’s recruiting and funding Democratic medical doctors and different Democratic scientists to run for workplace. It’s an overtly partisan operation, proper as much as a snarky-ish all-caps X put up about its $1-million dedication to California’s combat to neutralize the 5 new Home seats Texas is making an attempt so as to add. What else are you able to do when the opposite main social gathering, even its medical professionals, is main, aiding and abetting within the GOP struggle on science?
“If @SenBillCassidy had a backbone, a recognized anti-vax conspiracy theorist wouldn’t be destroying our public well being,” the group posted final Wednesday on X. “He had a possibility to thwart the affirmation of RFK Jr.,” 314 Motion president and founder Shaughnessy Naughton instructed me in a latest interview. “As a substitute he selected to go down a distinct path and go towards what his life expertise {and professional} coaching instructed him was a harmful nominee to steer our well being providers. And he did it anyway. … That’s shameful.”
In February, earlier than Kennedy was confirmed, the conservative New York Occasions columnist Bret Stephens rated him “worst nominee in U.S. Cupboard historical past.” After which Stephens prompt the individual he most well-liked for the job: Invoice Frist.
Jill Lawrence is an opinion author and writer of “The Artwork of the Political Deal: How Congress Beat the Odds and Broke Via Gridlock.” @jilldlawrence.bsky.social
