grift
[grift] / grɪft /
Noun
(sometimes used with a plural verb) a group of methods for obtaining money falsely through the use of swindles, frauds, dishonest gambling, etc.
money obtained from such practices.
Introduction
The fact that the Trump administration is chock full of already-wealthy people enriching themselves with our tax dollars and other resources is a bit of a dog-bites-man story. Whether it’s Trump and his own kids making millions off cryptocurrency and merchandise schemes or administration officials receiving massive financial donations in exchange for favors or power, there’s a new scheme every week, it seems.
However, the most morally egregious of these grifts are the ones impacting health care and public health in general. Let’s take a look at some of the worst ones.
The Nursing Home Industry
Nursing home companies and industry executives gave nearly $4.8 million to MAGA Inc., a pro-Trump PAC, beginning in August 2025, including $750,000 each from PruittHealth Corporation and a subsidiary of the Ensign Group. The donations turned out to be an investment in getting the Trump administration to overturn a Biden administration rule requiring increased nursing home staffing levels. The rule was an effort to reduce neglect among residents which had resulted in injuries and other dangerous health outcomes. They had already gotten a 10-year moratorium when Trump signed his One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law. But that wasn’t enough for the multibillion dollar nursing home industry staring at numerous lawsuits over their dangerous facilities.
They wanted the rule killed forever.
The New York Times picks up the story from here:
Later that same month, a handful of nursing home executives who had given the biggest donations joined industry lobbyists at Mr. Trump’s golf club in suburban Washington to plead their case, according to campaign finance filings and people familiar with the meeting.
Over light lunch fare, the contingent “urged the president to formally repeal the harmful minimum staffing mandate, which would have surely forced providers throughout the country to close their doors to new residents — or possibly close their doors altogether,” Bill Weisberg, the founder and chief executive of Saber Healthcare Group, recounted in a text message to The New York Times.
Less than one month after the lunch meeting, Trump administration lawyers quietly stopped defending the pending staffing rule in court against challenges from the industry.
That wasn’t the end of it. Just before the end of the year, the nursing home industry saw their investment truly pay off. In a statement that echoed industry talking points, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced they were rescinding the rule completely.
And so it was that an industry that pays its executives multimillion dollar salaries was able to buy influence and avoid staffing its facilities in a way that ensures patients are protected and safe. By one estimate, the rule they torpedoed would have saved 13,000 lives a year.
Extremity Care
Following $3 million in donations to pro-Trump Super PACs in 2024, Extremity Care, a medical products company that makes very pricey “skin substitute” bandages, gave $5 million to MAGA Inc. in February 2025. (By “very pricey”, we’re talking around $10,000 per square inch.) The company’s CEO, Oliver Burckhardt, also contributed $2.5 million to MAGA Inc. on the same day.
A week later, Burckhardt attended a small private event with Trump at Mar-a-Lago:
At the dinner, Mr. Burckhardt got a chance to speak briefly to the president and other guests about himself and the work of his company, Extremity Care, which makes pricey medical products including paper-thin bandages made of dried bits of placenta, according to three people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private event. He also brought copies of a flier urging the Trump administration to reverse a plan to restrict Medicare reimbursement for the bandages and criticizing former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. for having “rammed through a policy that would create more suffering and death for diabetic patients on Medicare.”
The next morning, Mr. Trump posted the flier on his social media site.
It was not just symbolic.
About one month later, the Trump administration announced it would delay until next year the Biden administration plan to limit Medicare’s coverage of the bandages, known as skin substitutes, saying that it was reviewing its policies.
Subsequently, Extremity Care or one of its affiliates dropped $2.5 million on Trump’s ballroom project. Given that Medicare payments for skin substitutes rose from $256 million in 2021 to $10 billion last in 2025 and Extremity Care received a sizable chunk of that spending, their investments in Trump’s pay-to-play scheme have paid massive dividends.
Big Tobacco
In May of this year, the FDA approved fruit-flavored vapes under the Orwellian excuse that it would tamp down on underage use of e-cigarettes. This didn’t happen by accident, of course. If you’re thinking there must have been some sort of quid pro quo involved, you’re absolutely correct. The New York Times is reporting that a Big Tobacco company made a $5 million donation to Trump’s MAGA Inc. super PAC just before the FDA announced its decision:
The tobacco company Reynolds American donated $5 million to a super PAC backed by President Trump last month, about one week before his administration rolled out a new policy that could prove lucrative to the tobacco industry.
The donation, which came through a Reynolds subsidiary and brings to $8 million the total donated by the subsidiary to MAGA Inc., the Trump-backed super PAC, was revealed in a campaign finance report filed Wednesday night.
The Times says two days after the donation, Trump had lunch with several tobacco company executives where they complained about how the FDA was regulating them. “Mr. Trump interrupted the conversation to call Dr. Marty Makary, the FDA commissioner,” the Times reports. When Makary didn’t pick up, he called RFK Jr. and Dr. Oz to share the Big Tobacco executives’ complaints with them. The decision on the fruit-flavored vapes came days later.
Not to leave nicotine pouches out of all the fun, the FDA also changed its rules to allow Philip Morris to market its Zyn products as “lower risk” compared to other forms of tobacco. You could almost hear the cheers from the corporate boardroom. It’s no wonder that, as MedPath points out, “Philip Morris expects Zyn pouches to make eight times the gross profits of its cigarettes.”
But the grift doesn’t end there. KFF Health News reported that the president bought stock in multiple tobacco companies this year:
Since late 2023, MAGA Inc. has received over $20 million in funding from the [tobacco] industry, federal campaign records show. Trump’s inauguration garnered nearly $4 million more. His ballroom project has disclosed donations of an unknown amount from Altria and Reynolds American.
Recent Trump administration actions show he’s followed through with his [pro-tobacco] campaign rhetoric. In May, the FDA released consequential guidance that allows manufacturers to market their vapes and nicotine pouches while awaiting agency approval. It also approved several vaping products. The month before, the Vapor Technology Association, which donated $1.25 million to Trump’s inauguration, told its vape-manufacturer members it had met with the White House to discuss its concerns.
By that point, Trump had gone on a stock-purchasing spree. In March he made eight separate purchases of Philip Morris or Altria stock.
KFF reports that Trump grew his stock holdings this year to as much as $1.64 million in Philip Morris, alone.
Kratom
Kratom is an herbal extract from the leaves of an evergreen tree. It is sold in gas stations, vitamin stores, vape shops, and other retail stores as an energy booster, mood lifter, and pain reliever. In high enough doses, it can produce opioid- and stimulant-like effects.
It is not approved or legally regulated by the FDA but it is still legal in over 40 states so long as it’s not sold as a dietary supplement, food additive, or approved drug.
Kratom is also addictive, can cause liver damage, seizures, and life-threatening respiratory depression, and is linked to thousands of deaths.
Oregon Senator Ron Wyden sent a letter to HHS Secretary RFK Jr. where he said a “quid-pro-quo seems to be unfolding between the Trump Administration and the kratom industry.” In his letter, Wyden focused on recent actions of Jerry Ross, founder of the kratom company Botanic Tonics, as well as at least one Trump administration official.
STAT shares why:
Ross donated to Kennedy’s already-defunct presidential campaign after Kennedy had been nominated as health secretary, and later his company made a $1 million donation to the MAHA Political Action Committee, according to Wyden. As health secretary, Kennedy tried to discourage Ohio’s governor from moving forward with a crackdown on kratom products, as reported by the Times. The letter also notes the Times’ reporting that Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has advocated for policies favorable to Botanic Tonics while holding a large financial stake in the company, worth as much as $1 million.
Wyden points out in his letter that the DEA’s recently announced plans to temporarily ban concentrated and synthetic 7-OH products (a psychoactive compound also found in trace amounts in kratom) will benefit Botanic Tonics. “This regulatory action is exactly what Secretary Mullin wants: it will remove Botanic Tonics’s synthetic competitors from shelves so that your products gain market share and his investment soars,” he wrote.
In other words, RFK Jr. and Mullin have essentially become lobbyists for the kratom industry, enriching themselves in the process.
Peptides
Peptides are short chains of amino acids that act as biological signaling molecules in the body, instructing cells and organs to perform specific tasks like regulating hormones, managing appetite, and healing tissue. Insulin is a peptide, for example. But, the most popular peptides at the moment are GLP-1 weight loss drugs. It is estimated that the market for GLP-1 drugs will rise from over $70 billion a year now to over $170 billion annually by 2030.
However, GLP-1s are not the only peptides and the FDA recently approved six for compounding. The move was controversial at best.
Via the American Journal of Managed Care:
When a reconstituted FDA advisory panel voted in late July to recommend 6 peptides for legal compounding, it was overriding the recommendation of the agency’s own career scientists, who recommended against it due to a lack of human safety data. The clash comes as HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr is moving to reclassify 14 of the 19 restricted peptides back to legal status. However, almost none of these compounds have FDA-approved indications, and with little regulation in place, gray-market vials remain the default source for millions of Americans.
It’s not just RFK Jr. who pushes peptides. There are other Trump administration members who have a deep interest and, more importantly, a financial stake. For example, former FDA chief Marty Makary was a top executive of the telehealth company Sesame, which connects consumers to physicians who can prescribe compounded weight-loss drugs.
But there’s a more blatant example with the FDA’s Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee (PCAC), the group that approved the six new molecules for compounding. The self-dealing with PCAC is so blatant that a consumer watchdog group is urging the HHS to investigate conflicts of interest among the group’s 12 members. Why? Because over half of PCAC members have financial ties to the peptide industry.
Via MedPage Today:
A consumer watchdog group is demanding that the HHS Office of Inspector General look into potential conflicts of interest among members of an FDA advisory committee that recommended that six peptides be added to the list of substances that can be compounded, despite a lack of evidence of their efficacy.
“Several members of the 2026 Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee appear to have had disqualifying financial interests in the pharmaceutical and peptide industries at the time of the July meeting…” [they] wrote last week in a letter to HHS Inspector General T. March Bell. [...]
At least seven committee members had financial interests in the peptide and pharmaceutical industries.
All but two of the 12 PCAC members were appointed while Trump was in office.
Conclusion
Pay-to-play politics and self-dealing by government officials is hardly a new phenomenon. What is new is the brazenness and the scope. In the realm of health care and public health, the grift can be dangerous and lead to actual harm to patients seeking care or consumers who are unaware of the dangers of products like kratom.
Trump has ushered in a new Gilded Age and it is a dangerous place.
Except for the super-wealthy and well-connected few, of course.
Ron Wyden is an Oregon senator in Congress. I did not see a Wyden in the Ohio state legislature. So who and what state are you referring to?
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