React 19 Was Doing This Work When It Cost People Everything

I went on the React 19 podcast. Here’s who they are and why it matters.

React 19 exists because a group of people got hurt, got dismissed, and then built the organization nobody was going to build for them.

I’ve followed their work since they started. Their host, Ann Forti, has been in this fight for decades, and it shows in the questions she asks.

Halfway through our conversation, Ann mentioned that her daughter is going in for knee surgery on Monday. The estimate came back at $38,000. They are cash pay, so they asked for the other number. The other number was $6,000.

That is the health care in a nutshell, and it is why a conversation about vaccine injury turns into a conversation about hospital pricing. Because once this system hurts you, you find out fast that the billing arm runs the same playbook as the clinical arm.

Ann wanted to know why nothing is moving.

Kennedy is in. Bhattacharya is in. The wins are small and the reversals are loud.

My answer is not that the good guys sold out. My answer is that there is no functioning policy process right now, and policy is being driven by bedwetting from outside entities.

Media hits, donor dinners, a chairman threatening a nomination.

In a normal White House all of that gets aired in a room with people who can push back on it. Now it goes straight to the top with nobody there to say the polling is wrong and the science is wrong and you campaigned on this. ( I wrote about this here.)

We also got into the compensation fight for the vaccine injured. My skepticism there is about Congress, not about the people doing the work.

Don’t despair. Where everything is now is not where it will be in six months.

But no one is coming from Washington to save your health.

Listen to the episode, and then go look at what React 19 is actually doing.