Robert F. Kennedy Jr. outlined a sweeping critique of the nation’s rehabilitation and addiction treatment system, arguing that its current structure lacks coordination, rewards failure, and creates financial incentives that perpetuate relapse rather than long-term recovery.

Kennedy said the existing model fails to integrate housing, law enforcement, health care, and mental health services, resulting in fragmented care with no single authority responsible for an individual’s outcome.

He described the system as one driven by fee-based services that reward repeated treatment episodes instead of sustained recovery.

Trump's Sovereign Wealth Fund: What Could It Mean For Your Money?

“Occurring in the response to responses. You know, there’s no coordination between all of the needs and the institutions that could help with this problem, that housing and law enforcement and health care and mental health care. There’s no coordination, and it’s a fee-based service system,” Kennedy said.

According to Kennedy, the structure of the system itself creates perverse incentives, regardless of the intentions of individual caregivers.

“So people are just like the medical system. People have an economic incentive to make sure you don’t get well. And that’s not saying people who work in these you know, in as caregivers, don’t want you to be well. Of course, they do. The system itself is designed to keep you sick,” he said.

Kennedy argued that repeated relapses benefit treatment providers financially while driving costs higher across the system.

This Could Be the Most Important Video Gun Owners Watch All Year

“Every time you relapse, the rehab makes more money, and the costs go up,” he said.

He also criticized the role of insurance companies, saying their financial calculations favor repeated treatment cycles rather than permanent recovery.

“And the insurance companies, you know, you think the insurance companies are going to lose money every time you go, but they are looking at the entire cost, because they collect friction from those causes like Lloyds of London,” Kennedy said.

Kennedy used an analogy to explain how insurers benefit from higher overall activity.

“With Lloyds of London, rather have one boat sink a year, or 100 boat sinks a year. Rather have 100 because then everybody is buying the insurance and the cost of the pie goes up and they’re collecting friction on it,” he said.

He said this dynamic extends across the entire rehabilitation system, with every layer benefiting financially from ongoing treatment rather than resolution.

“Oh, everybody along the way is making money on fee based services,” Kennedy said.

Kennedy said the solution requires a fundamental shift in how addiction treatment is structured and paid for, particularly within federal health agencies. He called for reforms at the Department of Health and Human Services over the next three years to transition away from fee-based reimbursement models.

“And ultimately, what we have to do at HHS over the next three years, do everything we can switch the model at CMMI and CMS and hrs and SAMHSA,” he said.

Kennedy emphasized the need for coordinated care with clear responsibility assigned to a single authority overseeing each patient’s progress.

“Coordinate response so that somebody is in charge of that addict, somebody is accountable as he moves through the system,” he said.

He said the goal should be outcome-based services, where providers are financially responsible for preventing relapse over an extended period rather than being paid repeatedly for short-term treatment episodes.

“And to move to outcome based services, where people have an incentive to make sure you don’t relapse, that there’s a strong economic incentive,” Kennedy said.

Under the model Kennedy described, providers would receive a single payment for treatment and be required to monitor and support individuals for several years.

“You get paid one price treating that individual, and you follow that individual for three years, you’re responsible for all the cause that will bring down the cause,” he said.

Kennedy argued that evidence-based treatments already exist but are not widely or effectively implemented because the system lacks accountability.

“Because then people will look, we have lots of evidence to treatments. We know what works. We’re not doing it well, because nobody has an incentive to do that, and so there’s no accountability,” he said.

WATCH:

The opinions expressed by contributors and/or content partners are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Objectivist. Contact us for guidelines on submitting your own commentary.