There are plenty of problems with U.S. health care spending, which is why it’s a shame that Donald Trump has nominated for secretary of health and human services someone who doesn’t understand what they are. One of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s top conspiracy theories is that food companies poison their products to encourage chronic diseases, from which pharmaceutical companies profit.

It is true that health care spending on chronic diseases has risen, and this is lucrative for pharmaceutical companies. But as Chris Pope of the Manhattan Institute notes, “The main reason spending on chronic disease has increased so much is because improved treatment has turned them into things that people live with for many years, rather than dying from quickly.” That’s a health care success, not a failure. It creates different budgetary challenges for Medicare, which the government needs to address. But Kennedy isn’t too interested in difficult questions like that and instead prefers to vilify the companies whose innovations have prolonged our lives and the companies who make our sustenance.