The MAHA movement built its brand on fighting corporate capture. Its big Washington summit is bankrolled by the companies it claims to fight, including two of the country’s largest health insurers and the AI giants now reshaping how care gets approved and denied.
In the past year, President Trump has spent a lot of energy attacking health insurers. Last November he told Senate Republicans to take money away from the “money sucking” and “BIG, BAD Insurance Companies,” and weeks later he swore the only health care he’d approve was one that cut out the “BIG, FAT, RICH” insurers who had ripped off America long enough. In December he vowed to summon insurance executives and make them slash prices. When he did, AHIP’s chief executive, Mike Tuffin, pushed back, saying premiums simply reflect the cost of care. Remember that name. Nine months later, Tuffin has a seat on a MAHA summit panel, and his industry is helping pay for the event.
On September 29, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again movement is scheduled to hold a summit in Washington. POLITICO reports that the sponsors footing the bill include Walmart, OpenAI, and Anthropic. One panel features executives from UnitedHealth and Elevance, two of the largest for-profit insurers in the country. Alongside them sits Tuffin, who leads the industry’s top lobbying group in Washington.
Sponsors do not just get their names on a banner; they get a private dinner with the summit’s speakers. Those speakers include senior officials from the Department of Health and Human Services. So the companies with business before Kennedy’s department can buy an evening with the people who regulate them.
MAHA’s whole pitch is that industry poisoned Americans for profit and captured the agencies meant to protect them. Now the movement is selling access to said industry. A MAHA supporter quoted by POLITICO said it plainly. This is not fighting corporate capture. This is corporate capture.
