Steve Cortes On Make America Healthy Again And The Case For Preventive Health

What does it say about a country's health system when chronic illness becomes normal in childhood? In this episode of the Health Policy Podcast, I sit down with Steve Cortes, former senior advisor to President Trump and a documentary filmmaker, to unpack the thinking behind the Make America Healthy Again, or MAHA, movement. Steve argues that the timing is no coincidence. He points to a convergence of troubling indicators, from rising rates of chronic illness among U.S. children to declining life expectancy and a shrinking pool of young adults physically eligible for military service. Taken together, he believes these trends signal a deeper systemic failure rather than isolated public health challenges. We also reflect on how the COVID-19 pandemic acted as a catalyst rather than a cause. According to Steve, the last few years exposed structural weaknesses in the medical establishment and accelerated public skepticism around authority, incentives, and transparency. Our conversation explores how that moment reshaped attitudes toward informed consent, preventive care, and the role of diet and lifestyle in long-term health outcomes. Rather than framing MAHA as a partisan response, Steve positions it as a reaction to data that many policymakers have struggled to confront head-on. We close by discussing Steve's MAHA documentary and where listeners can watch it. The film shifts the focus away from reactive, late-stage interventions and toward upstream prevention, asking why health systems are so often designed to treat crisis rather than support everyday wellbeing. It is a conversation that challenges assumptions about medicine, policy, and responsibility, and invites a broader rethink of how health is defined and protected in the first place. If the data keeps pointing in the same direction, are we prepared to rethink healthcare before the next crisis forces the issue, and what would that shift actually require?