Is this the “sickest generation” in American history? Not even close.

If you’ve been paying any attention to the fractious debate over American health policy, you’ve probably heard this phrase: “the sickest generation in American history.” The words can be found in the third sentence of a major report released in May by a presidential commission led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., but the line itself essentially sums up the ethos of his Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement. America, and especially its children, is “the sickest country in the world,” as Kennedy himself told senators in a hearing earlier this month.

This idea — that we are sicker than we’ve ever been — underpins the radicalism of the MAHA agenda. If it’s true, then what choice do we have but to blow up the American health care system and remake it from top