I have to admit, I wasted 3 hours of my life watching the debacle of the Health Secretary, Robert Kennedy Jr, at a Senate hearing earlier this week. Look, folks, I was a committee nerd when I was a legislator. I know the game, I know the procedure, and I understand the media. But, what unfolded at that committee was something beyond acceptable. For starters, if comprehension of the current state of health care in the United States is what you’re interested in, you could not glean any insights based on the questions and the lack of opportunity for any concrete answers.
In a court of law, unlike the court of public opinion, if an attorney asks a question, the person on the stand has to answer the question. You hear the answer, you get to your next question. If an attorney is badgering the witness, they get called out to stop and the witness is asked to answer the question. The committee chair exerts no such influence in committee, and I think that’s a major problem for accountability and transparency.
In parliamentary systems, we have questions at which point the minister that is asked the question has time to answer the question. Even in committee, where time is not necessarily as equal between questioner and responder, the time, in my experience, was skewed to the witness to which we were interested in hearing from. Members of the committee made news when we brought newsworthy evidence… something that hadn’t been discovered before, or the witnessed possibly provided an answer in committee that caused a stir. There was some quoting out of context, but the minister could correct (or amend) the record if he/she chose.
In both cases, there is an interest in genuinely understanding what official information is available that enhances accountability and transparency. And, in the US health care system, where Americans are the sickest people in the world, according to Secretary Kennedy, the public needs to know what motivates current health policy.
This was not at all apparent at the Senate hearing. There was shouting. There was name calling. There were plenty of questions asked with no interest for the Health Secretary to provide official answers to prevailing health concerns. None of it seemed to matter.
Sure, there are concerns about the Health Secretary’s suitability for the role, and I am not in any way defending him or his record. But, his record and his policies deserve full accountability and transparency, which the Senate committee, unfortunately for everyone, failed to provide. A real shame.
It was an embarrassing episode in democratic administration.
By Rob Leone