Bloomberg News reported on September 18, 2026 that MAHA Center, a nonprofit run by Tony Lyons, Kennedy's longtime book publisher and a co-founder of a group that backed his 2024 presidential campaign, “solicited payment from companies in exchange for access to top agency officials at an upcoming event, according to documents viewed by Bloomberg News.”
The menu was tiered. “The highest level, quoted at $300,000 to some prospective sponsors, guaranteed a speaking slot at the event 'with meaningful input on the panel composition and topic' as well as a 'private dinner for 30 guests' with Kennedy and Mehmet Oz, head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.”
The part of this that does not depend on anonymous sourcing was already public. Two days before Bloomberg's story, the trade publication InsideHealthPolicy reported that the nonprofit was “spotlighting planned appearances by key officials at HHS and the National Institutes of Health” alongside insurers, telehealth and AI companies. The summit's own website lists the date, the venue, the sponsors and the federal officials speaking. The sponsors include Grail, ResMed, Anthropic, OpenAI, Walmart, Hims & Hers, Centene, Tempus and Compass Pathways, several of them regulated by agencies Kennedy runs. Grail's blood-based cancer screening test faced an FDA advisory panel the following week. The government speakers include Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, senior HHS staff, and a deputy general counsel moderating a psychedelics panel featuring one of the sponsors.
HHS said the officials did not know. Spokesperson Emily Hilliard said they “were not involved in the planning or sponsorship activities for the MAHA Summit and were not aware of the sponsorship arrangements described.”
Donald Sherman of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said the disclosure changes that: “If they didn't know, they might have some plausible deniability. But now that they do know, it certainly doesn't seem appropriate for the secretary to attend an event that is being marketed to companies with business before the agency.”
Asked publicly the day before about taking money from companies, Lyons acknowledged the question was fair. “They said, 'Oh, you're taking money from a bunch of different companies, and we'd like to talk about those companies, and doesn't it feel like you're you're being co-opted by these companies?' And I was thinking, you know, that's a reasonable question.” Bloomberg reported he did not answer it directly, and said he would like similar scrutiny applied to members of Congress.
Nobody has alleged a crime. The solicitation came from an outside nonprofit rather than from HHS, and attending an event is not itself a violation. What is alleged is the thing Kennedy built his reputation opposing. As Bloomberg put it, “Kennedy has long criticized the health agencies he now oversees for being captured by corporate influences they are meant to regulate.”
The $300,000 figure rests on documents Bloomberg viewed and on people who would not be named. It is reported here as Bloomberg's account, not as an established fact.
A note on sourcing: the sponsorship details rest on two sources, Bloomberg's original report and InsideHealthPolicy's earlier reporting on the roster; the October 1 update adds coverage of the summit itself. The summit's own website lists the sponsors and the government speakers, but it presents them on its front page rather than at a stable address, so it is described here rather than cited.
Update (October 1, 2026): The summit took place on September 29 at the Waldorf Astoria in Washington, and Kennedy used a fireside chat with Vice President JD Vance to promote artificial intelligence, a topic Ars Technica noted sits oddly with MAHA's usual focus and that matches two of the event's sponsors, OpenAI and Anthropic. “One of the things that is going to change is that we're never ever again going to be able to be dominated by public officials who tell us trust the experts,” Kennedy said, according to the Washington Examiner. He went on, “If somebody tells you masks work, trust the experts. AI may tell you otherwise,” and said of vaccines, “AI may say it actually doesn't do that.” He said AI “really has the capacity to dominate us, to free us from medical tyranny,” and that it could give “a second opinion that is much better informed than any doctor in the country.” Vance agreed that “the experts are not the experts in the same way.”
Ars Technica put Kennedy's three examples to Google's Gemini and to ChatGPT. Both said masks reduce the spread of respiratory infections, that social distancing is effective, and that vaccines can prevent infection and transmission, with the degree depending on the vaccine and disease. Kennedy did acknowledge that AI has “some downsides.”