The 1 Kennedy Not Shunning Rfk Jr.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been condemned and disavowed by many in his family. But now one member of the clan is teaming up with him.

Soon after the Health and Human Services secretary announced a new $100 million initiative Monday to boost mental health and addiction treatment, he was trumpeting the news at an event hosted by his cousin, Patrick Kennedy.

Many Kennedys have rebuked RFK Jr in recent years, first for teaming up with President Donald Trump on the 2024 campaign and then for upending work at the CDC.

A former Democratic congressman from Rhode Island, Kennedy doesn’t back RFK Jr.’s anti-vaccine agenda. And as a longtime champion of mental health efforts, he would have good reason to rebuff his cousin. Not long ago, RFK Jr. neutered a mental health law written by Kennedy that required health insurers to pay for mental health treatment on par with physical health care. At the end of 2024, the Biden administration had finalized a regulation to ensure compliance — and six months later, the new health secretary nullified the rule.

Then in January, RFK Jr.’s health department axed thousands of grants for substance use disorder, before reversing course and reinstating them. In an interview with POLITICO Magazine, Kennedy said that he and his colleagues at the lobbying group Healthsperien “lit up the boards” when the cuts were announced, spending all day on the phone urging administration officials to backtrack.

Kennedy thinks he can be a bridge between the mental health community and the Trump administration. That’s why instead of shunning RFK Jr. like much of his family, Kennedy is working with him to come up with new mental health policies.

“I just feel a unique opportunity to be able to approach my cousin and tell him the things I think we can coalesce around,” he said. “Things that would really help advance our movement, and I think, frankly, really advance their movement.”

Beyond pragmatic policymaking, there’s also a personal factor that Kennedy thinks could help them strengthen mental health care together.

“We go to the same 12-step meetings, and I know from growing up in my family — same as his same family — what happened to our family,” he said. “I know the impact of trauma.”

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

How did you feel when the parity rule got thrown out?

I felt like we're done for this administration, we're not going to get anything, especially with everything else going on. So I figured, how do we get the administration to basically tell payers that they need to work with them to come up with an alternative [to the parity rule].

For me, as the author of parity, I always thought I wanted the same number of inpatient beds and outpatient beds as they do in physical [health care coverage] and I wanted the same number of therapy visits. But we're in a moment now where parity is really about trying to get the same urgency and the same results. And with AI, we could transform the treatment of people with mental illness and addictions, because now we could identify what works for whom, and that is the holy grail for our movement.

Have you thought about asking your cousin to reverse course on the mental health parity regulation?

We have to find ways that we can advance our movement, and the only way to do that is to be engaged to help inform policy makers, both on the Hill and in the administration, on the things that they can do to advance our cause. Now they have a focus on value and quality, [return on investment] and all of that, which, frankly, shouldn't be an anathema to our community. If you are all about ROI and showing value, there's no place where there's greater opportunity to do that than in mental health. Especially given if you integrate mental health into overall health, this is the key to the savings that MAHA wants. You cannot address chronic illness without addressing integrated mental health and addiction treatment. So in a funny sense, we have the key to unlock the whole MAHA agenda.

So what is this mental health announcement about?

We don't have good data on how important mental health is to reducing these comorbidities. But the VA has some insights, because they do have a more fulsome medical record because of the integration of trauma care. The hope is you can interrogate that cloud, and we can tell if these interventions help people with their trauma and can really reduce these other comorbidities and the number of visits that a veteran has to make to a VA hospital or clinic for X, Y and Z.

So then the idea is, would the administration be willing to fund a broader kind of data exchange network and we could partner with states to determine what does that framework look like? So that we can include more than just clinical, in the finer sense of the word, data, but other data to show how people are really doing. What's that going to take? How can we do that? That should be our goal.

As a mental health community, if we can show the value, if it can be demonstrated to show how lives improve — and when lives improve, mentally, their whole physical health improves concurrently. We know that, but we have to get the data to demonstrate that. This administration is all about value, and they want to set up and reduce the escalating cost of entitlements. We might be the answer to a lot of the savings out there. And rather than just kind of cut across the board, maybe we can be part of showing that investing in these mental health interventions can dramatically reduce [illness]. 

The fastest growing addiction overdose population is those 65 and older.

Once we get some wins, I'm convinced we can broaden our fight to win the dollars we need in Medicaid coverage for mental health.

Republicans in Congress have rolled back ACA subsidies. What makes you think they’re going to be willing to spend more on mental health?

If they want to continue to dramatically cut back — and everyone's going to be feeling the pinch on premiums and roll back on ACA subsidies — they're going to obviously need to talk a lot about what their approach is going to be, because giving individual savings accounts directly to the people is not going to work. There's a million and a half subscribers in Blue Cross alone in Florida that are no longer going to be there in six months because of the subsidies being cut. And so, where are they going to go? So we're just trying to push different concepts.

What has your relationship been like with your cousin? I know both of you have struggled with addiction issues. Has that been something you've connected on in the past?

We're neighbors on the Cape. We go to the same 12-step meetings, and I know from growing up in my family — same as his family — what happened to our family. I know the impact of trauma. I know it a little bit differently than what he knows, but I know existentially what it did to our family.

That suffering has been generational, generational, and I've seen — we've both seen — our cousins, our siblings, our family members, suffer from mental illness and addiction as a direct result of the trauma that we were inflicted with. So there is an appreciation, I think from him, on a very visceral level, the importance of mental health.

Many of your family members have denounced RFK Jr. for endorsing Trump in 2024 and more recently upending the CDC. You have chosen not to do that, is that correct? Why not?

We can't sit on our hands for three years before we start thinking that we're going to do something. There's going to be a lot of decisions made within the next three years. Frankly, Bobby does have a passion for this, from his own lived experience and that of our family. To his credit, he's connected me with, and I've spoken to [Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator] Dr. [Mehmet] Oz. I've been in meetings with [Food and Drug Administrator Marty] Makary, around AI, and Makary invited me out to help and put together what their vetting process is going to be for these chatbots. How do we ensure that they're not toxic and dangerous? Have FDA actually have oversight, much like they would do for a drug, to test for efficacy and safety like they would a drug — these are exciting conversations.

What do you make of the divisions in your family that have been laid bare by your cousin’s role with Trump and HHS?

I think everybody in my family appreciates what I've been working on. And I think that's kind of a unique position, because of my long-standing work in this field, and on a bipartisan basis.

I'm working in the mental health domain. That's where I'm focused, and I'm no longer, obviously, in Congress. I have credibility. I have access to the best and brightest in mental health, and I'm trying to make sure I inform better public policy in Congress.

Are you worried that it will seem like you’re endorsing RFK Jr.’s anti-vaccine stance or the Trump administration if you work with him on mental health issues?

I've been at this my whole life. I am Mr. Mental Health. Kennedy Forum is now the leader of the CEO Alliance on Mental Health, which is all the major mental health organizations. This is my work, my legacy. The Kennedy Forum was announced to run the CEO alliance after my letter in favor of Bobby, and so I feel like I have an opportunity, and we're going to have to be frank with where we oppose — and I'm talking only about mental health here — things the administration has proposed on mental health and where we could offer insights.

There's this whole other issue around commitment and housing and where they're going to take people who are on the streets. Ninety-nine percent of the advocacy community is not happy with the status quo on people living on the streets. But the answer is nuisance care court. It's a much more proactive intervention process. It's first instance of psychosis. We have a lot of data on that, that shows what works.

It's putting these things out there, because I don't think they've got it all vetted yet or defined. We want to be at the table to help them, because otherwise it all happens in a vacuum.

Do you think any other family members will react negatively to you working with RFK Jr. and HHS?

Mental health is my thing. Everyone in my family knows that and my Republican colleagues have known that because, of course, parity was bipartisan. I'm not running for office. I’m trying to run for the mental health community, what we could do for this cause, and I think it's uniquely a cause that could help bring people together.