Trump and primary care: Best ways to Make America Health Again

The new administration of President Donald J. Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. should make primary care the cornerstone of efforts to Make America Healthy Again, said four experts who analyzed that sector of health care.

On Feb. 18, the Milbank Memorial Fund, in conjunction with The Physicians Foundation and the Robert Graham Center for Policy Studies in Primary Care, published the 2025 Primary Care Scorecard. The new report is “The Cost of Neglect: How Chronic Underinvestment in Primary Care is Failing US Patients.”

The organizations convened an online forum with experts in primary care to discuss the findings. During that session, Joanne Kenen, journalist-in-residence at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, also asked each of them for their quick prescriptions for how the new administration could improve the national outlook for primary care.

Answers came from Asaf Bitton, MD, MPH, executive director of Ariadne Labs and a primary care physician; Yalda Jabbarpour, MD, co-author of the report and director of the Robert Graham Center for Policy Studies in Primary Care; Efrain Talamantes, MD, CEO of AltaMed Health Services; and Sophia Tripoli, MPH, senior director of health policy for Families USA. In the discussion, Ripley Hollister, MD, a board member of The Physicians Foundation, also spoke extensively about the national crisis in primary care.

This slideshow presents their recommendations. Their answers were recorded, and the transcripts on the slides were edited for length and clarity.