Whopper of the Week: RFK Jr. Wants You to See A Chatbot Not Your Doctor

Whopper of the Week: 

RFK JR. WANTS YOU TO SEE A CHATBOT NOT YOUR DOCTOR

"You may have a medical record that is a thousand pages long. You have six minutes with a doctor today. He’s not going to be able to review it, but AI can… It can give a second opinion that is much better informed than any doctor in the country." -- MAHA Summit, September 29, 2026
 

SUMMARY

At the September 2026 MAHA Summit, Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Vice President J. D. Vance discussed artificial intelligence (AI) applications in healthcare. Kennedy recounted a recent meeting with the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, who said the quality of AI medical advice has become so impressive that it should be “malpractice for a doctor to make a diagnosis or to make a prescription without at least checking AI.” Kennedy told Vance that the Department of Health and Human Services wants Americans to be able to access their full medical record on their phones and use AI to synthesize it, declaring that AI has the capability “to free us from medical tyranny.” 

WHY THIS IS A WHOPPER

At the MAHA Summit, Kennedy told people not to trust their care providers. He bleakly described six minute visits with an impersonal provider who is unfamiliar with their patients' record. He then claimed that AI can provide information and advice that is “better informed than any doctor in the country.” But information is only one element of care. Patients want providers who know them, whom they can trust and who can help them navigate the healthcare system. By eroding trust in the patient-provider relationship, Kennedy is making it harder for both parties to have open, productive communication.

Certainly, AI has enormous potential to improve information availability throughout healthcare.  It’s already being used by some physicians for literature searches, research and data analysis, to elicit patient health histories, and to summarize patient data. AI can improve the accuracy of diagnostic tools and devices. AI is also being used to reduce administrative workloads, produce notes from patient visits, draft physician correspondence, and create educational materials. Finally AI for clinical decision making is rapidly moving into patient care settings, but many concerns still need to be addressed.  

Current AI models are just not ready – technically or legally – to be the professional standard of care. In fact, a 2026 survey found that over 70% of doctors find “the accuracy and reliability of AI generated outputs” as a hurdle to their use in clinical settings. Chatbots for use by the general public have given unreliable and potentially hazardous advice about diet, diagnostics, mental health and cancer care. Paul Offitt, a professor of pediatrics at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, notes that the White House’s own AI-powered platform called America.gov delivers false and biased medical information about vaccines. Offitt concludes, “In the right hands, AI is a powerful tool for providing accurate, up-to-date, science-based answers to questions. In the wrong hands, such as our current federal government leaders, it isn’t.”  

AI tools are new, and laws, regulations and standards for their use in clinical care still need to be developed, at the state and federal level. A 2025 publication from the Agency for Health Research and Quality suggests that AI should complement patient-clinician interactions, not replace them. The National Academy of Medicine published an AI Code of Conduct for Health and Medicine which recommended that AI tools be clinically validated and monitored, and that their developers should provide more transparency about how clinical recommendations are derived and how they should be interpreted. Concerns remain about how values are incorporated into AI models and whether bias makes them misaligned with patients’ interests or preferences. Finally, patient privacy is at risk since healthcare providers must comply with federal HIPAA regulations. Unfortunately, AI models have already breached and published private health data. 

WHY IT MATTERS

Secretary Kennedy spoke about AI as a way to improve clinical care.  Our healthcare system does have serious problems, including a shortage of primary care providers, particularly in rural areas, and physician burnout due to administrative burdens.  But AI alone is not going to fix systemic issues that are plaguing the healthcare system in the United States.

Kennedy does not seem to understand the important role of primary care and other medical disciplines that develop long term relationships with patients. Healthcare is not just about correctly reading patient histories or analyzing the medical literature. It is about treating the whole person, seeing them as an individual within the context of their family and the community in which they live. Primary care is built on a relationship of trust between patients, families and care providers over time. According to several studies, healthcare systems with a strong primary care base are more cost-effective and deliver better health outcomes for the population. Unfortunately, fewer than 70% of American adults have access to primary care because of a lack of medical insurance, high out-of-pocket costs, or provider shortages. Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, under Secretary Kennedy’s leadership, is cutting $1 trillion in federal healthcare funding over a decade, which will dramatically reduce the number of Americans who can access primary care.

The secretary should be leading the responsible use of AI in medicine, not pitting tech companies against physicians and other healthcare providers. Ideally, a federal medical AI agenda would be patient-centered, addressing the barriers and sources of dissatisfaction that patients encounter with healthcare. AI could also be harnessed to address major public health problems such as the underlying causes for rising childhood, maternal, and middle-aged mortality. That is not what Secretary Kennedy is doing.  

The emergence of AI comes at a time when health systems are increasingly captured by profit-seeking corporations. Insurance companies, the pharmaceutical industry, private equity, and the MAHA aligned wellness industry are all finding creative ways to extract profits. Neither patients nor providers like how the profit motive distorts healthcare, with providers are describing moral injury and disillusionment. Patients, and healthcare, will suffer until the United States decides to make healthcare universally accessible. For now, AI represents simply one more profit-driven corporate play for healthcare dollars, and Kennedy is acting as Silicon Valley’s cheerleader. 
 

Contributions by:  David Goldberg, M.D., Benedicte Callan, Ph.D., Aurora Horstkamp, M.D., Bruce Mirken, Mary Canales, R.N., Ph.D., David Moskowitz M.F.A., Miriam Rabkin M.D., M.P.H