Quick: What’s the biggest debate happening right now that touches on pharmaceutical greed and the US health care system?

There’s a good chance you said vaccines, their efficacy, and whether we should be made to get them. For the past few years, the blue-red food fight that for many constitutes US politics has often been centered on vaccines and whether or not one “believes” enough in science to voluntarily get the jab — or to support mandates for others. Look at the way that Florida governor Ron DeSantis catapulted to prominence in Republican politics by rolling back the “medical authoritarianism” of pandemic mandates while surrounding himself with anti-vaccine cranks.

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden’s stiffest primary challenge has so far come from a longtime anti-vaccine Kennedy family member who points to the past few years of immunization policy as a nefarious product of pharmaceutical greed. The past few weeks alone have been dominated, ironically, by debate about the effectiveness of debate in responding to anti-vaccine commentators who share Kennedy’s sentiments, who have grown in prominence in recent years.