The MAHA Insider: Calley Means on Chronic Disease, Big Food, and Healthcare Costs | 13th & Park
What this video covers
Recorded in May 2026, this is Calley Means speaking as an insider of the administration he helped bring to power — billed as an advisor to HHS and co-author of Good Energy, interviewed on 13th & Park, a policy interview show produced by the lobbying firm Ballard Partners. The conversation is a retrospective and a status report: what the MAHA movement set out to do, what Means says it has already delivered through HHS and CMS, and where the project goes next.
Means’s economic argument is the spine of the interview. He contends that the core problem is design, not effort: insurance companies profit from rising premiums, pharmaceutical companies profit from managing chronic conditions indefinitely, and the resulting trajectory — 48 cents of every federal tax dollar going to healthcare, in his figure — points toward fiscal collapse. The remedy he sketches is to redirect healthcare dollars toward prevention, nutrition, and patient empowerment rather than the “pharmaceutical treadmill.”
The episode also contains a striking piece of political history: Means recounts his role in brokering the phone call between Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Donald Trump in the hours after the July 2024 assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania — the conversation that began the alliance which would become the MAHA movement. He predicts the Trump–Kennedy partnership will be remembered as one of the most consequential in modern public health.
Key points
- Means argues the health crisis is a design failure: economic incentives reward sickness over health, from insurers profiting on rising premiums to pharma profiting on lifelong disease management.
- He claims 48 cents of every federal tax dollar now goes to healthcare — his figure, offered to frame the crisis as a fiscal emergency, not just a health one.
- He describes MAHA’s formation and credits the movement with policy wins already delivered at HHS and CMS — his insider’s account of the administration’s record.
- Means recounts brokering the RFK Jr.–Trump phone call after the Butler assassination attempt, presenting it as the founding moment of the MAHA alliance.
- He argues for shifting healthcare spending toward prevention, nutrition, and patient empowerment — the policy direction he advocates from inside the administration.
- Note on the venue: 13th & Park is produced by Ballard Partners, a lobbying firm — the interview is a friendly-platform conversation, and readers should weigh that context.