Trump to appoint United Healthcare-funded lobbyist to top position in apparent rebuke of RFK Jr’s agenda
Donald Trump is reportedly set to appoint a prominent healthcare industry lobbyist to his new administration in a move that could potentially tee up a power struggle with Robert F Kennedy Jr, his controversial nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.
According to The Financial Times, the new president has Don Dempsey in mind to be his top health official at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
Dempsey is the current head of policy and research at Better Medicare Alliance, a lobby group that advocates for an alternative to the federal Medicare program and that is funded by insurance companies, including UnitedHealth and Humana.
He previously served in the OMB in a human resources capacity during Trump’s first term in the White House and has also worked as a lobbyist for CVS Health.
Should he be offered the position of the OMB’s health program associate director and accept it, Dempsey would hold sway over the US’s $1.8trn healthcare budget and have responsibility for 13 separate divisions and agencies, a prospect seemingly at odds with Trump’s promise to Kennedy that he would be free to run “wild” across government with his “Make America Healthy Again” agenda.
Dempsey is also seen as a representative of the US healthcare establishment, whereas RFK Jr is a persistent critic of Big Pharma.
However, it is by no means certain that Kennedy will be confirmed by the Senate, given his long history of entertaining conspiracy theories and expressing scepticism towards vaccines and other matters of scientific consensus – not to mention the many bizarre anecdotes from his personal biography that emerged last year during his failed run for the presidency as an independent candidate.
In a bid to reassure Republican senators and shore up support ahead of his confirmation hearing next Wednesday, Kennedy has reportedly been telling them this week that he is actually “all for” vaccines after all and merely wants to make safety and efficacy data easier to access.
That comes despite his previously declaring that the Covid-19 vaccine was “deadly”, that the measles vaccine causes autism in children and that polio vaccines may have killed “many, many, many, many, many more people than polio ever did”, opinions that are at odds with those of most medical professionals.
An open letter signed by more than 15,000 doctors was published last month in which the signatories begged senators not to confirm Kennedy, branding him “actively dangerous” and calling his nomination “a slap in the face to every healthcare professional who has spent their lives working to protect patients from preventable illness and death”.
Dempsey’s potential role at the OMB would also bring him into contact with another divisive Trump associate, Elon Musk, whose newly-founded Department of Government Efficiency is seeking to cut federal waste and whose work is likely to have a huge bearing on American healthcare spending.
Earlier this week, Trump’s choice for director of the OMB, Russell Vought – who also led the office from 2019 to 2021 during his first term and who has since been associated with the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 proposals – had his own confirmation hearing before senators.
The president also named two more former officials from his first term, Theo Merkel and Joel Zinberg, to special assistant roles pertaining to health policy as the executive branch gradually takes shape under his leadership.
