Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was recently interviewed by CBS News. It was his first TV interview since becoming HHS chief.

The wide-ranging interview focused primarily on Kennedy’s touted Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) agenda. For Kennedy, a key feature of MAHA is addressing the quality of the foods Americans eat. As he contends, the “FDA needs to start regulating food again and saying, you know, not just when food is adulterated, when there’s bacteria in it, let’s look at the chemicals in it.”

CBS was concerned about DOGE’s recent funding cuts to various programs, which clearly imply that these cuts would hurt Americans’ health benefits. However, Kennedy pushed back, stating, “HHS’s job is to make America healthy, and we’re spending $1.9 trillion a year, and people are not getting healthy. … What Elon said is that when you do a disruption of this, a lot of times, 80% of the people that get cut … You may make mistakes, as much as 20[%], and then you go back and remedy that.”

He added, “People have a choice about how sick they are going to be, many people. If you don’t have any choice, then we should give you all the resources that you want, but I mean … it’s a moral question, too, and it’s a philosophical question.” Kennedy then added, “If you’re smoking three packs of cigarettes a day, should you expect society to pay when you get sick?” By “society,” of course, he means “taxpayers.”

That’s a good question because, ever since ObamaCare, the issue of the federal government weighing into Americans’ healthcare choices has been breached. While the ObamaCare mandate has since been rescinded, ObamaCare itself has continued on.

The obvious issue is social accountability. If taxpayers foot the bill for a person’s healthcare, does that also raise the question of personal behavior?

If a person is paying for their own healthcare, they are free to live as healthy or unhealthy as they choose. But if taxpayers are paying, should the people paying the bill not have a say in what lifestyle choices an individual is permitted to make, as poor decisions would cost everyone more?

This is the inevitable problem with socialism — it inherently runs roughshod over individual freedoms because the needs and concerns, indeed the cost, of collective society outweigh the freedoms of the individual.

Kennedy made a point to note that he was not advocating for the government controlling what Americans are allowed to eat and drink — perhaps an allusion to the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s famous “broccoli” argument during the ObamaCare case hearings. “But … should you then expect society to care for you when you predictably get very sick at the same level as somebody who was born with a congenital illness?” he asked. “The best answer to that is to realign our incentives so that the economic incentives, the individuals and the industry align with the public health outcomes that we desire.”

He advocates a carrot approach, not a stick. But once again, the issue is the government, which is funded by taxpayers, paying for people’s healthcare.

Interestingly, Democrats have long advocated for greater government involvement in providing ever-increasing provisions and programs for people, such as Medicaid. Yet when it comes to questions regarding those receiving such government benefits having expectations of personal responsibility and behavior placed upon them, leftists immediately recoil. The trouble is such an attitude only breeds more irresponsible behavior, not less. If people want to be free from government control and coercion, they should avoid depending on the government for their basic needs.