Make America Healthy Again? Not With This Self-Inflicted Wound

The Department of Education’s new rule narrowing which graduate programs qualify as “professional degrees” is not a technical update. It is a targeted attack on the sectors that keep Americans alive, educated, and functioning. Starting July 1, 2026, entire fields dominated by women will lose access to the federal loan limits required to earn the degrees their professions demand.

This is not a small adjustment. It is a direct hit on nursing, speech-language pathology, audiology, physical therapy, occupational therapy, social work, teaching, school counseling, and child development. These are the fields already in crisis. These are also the fields overwhelmingly led and staffed by women.

Meanwhile, every traditionally male or male-preserved prestige field remains protected. Medicine, law, dentistry, theology, optometry, veterinary medicine, pharmacy, osteopathic medicine, podiatry, chiropractic, clinical psychology. A list that reflects the priorities of wealthy donors and Project 2025 architects, not the needs of this country.

Federal loan policy now follows the same worldview that fuels the online incel communities and the Trad Wife fantasy. Women should stay home. Women should be dependent. Women should not build careers in powerful, essential sectors. Women should not have economic autonomy. Removing loan access from female-dominated professions achieves exactly that. This is not subtle. It is policy shaped by resentment of women and fear of their independence.

The timing makes it impossible to pretend this is accidental. The United States faces a projected shortage of more than one million nurses by 2031. Arizona is short of special education teachers, therapists, school psychologists, and critical care nurses. Students in these fields are already taking on heavy debt. Cutting their access to federal loans will push them out of the pipeline entirely.

And then what. Import workers? The same administration is busy deporting immigrants and closing off avenues for skilled workers to come here. The contradictions are not mistakes. They are choices. This is what happens when policy is shaped by a culture that distrusts women, hates unions, and prefers citizens who cannot push back.

Professional associations across the spectrum are saying the same thing. Nursing and therapy programs will lose students. Hospitals and schools will lose staff. Families will lose services. And the country will lose the people who keep it functioning.

Working professionals who remain in the field will be pushed past the breaking point. They will serve fewer patients. They will limit caseloads. They will prioritize the people who can navigate or pay for faster access. Everyone else will wait longer or go without.

But wait! Didn’t these same boneheaded U.S. policymakers already claim it was socialism that was responsible for logjams in healthcare in other countries? Go figure.

At the state level, Arizona will feel this collapse early and harshly. Rural hospitals will not be able to hire. School districts will go without special education staff. Children with disabilities will lose support. Seniors will lose care. Families will be forced to absorb the fallout.

The Department of Education can describe this as “clarity.” It is not. It is a political project designed to weaken women, destabilize care work, and clear the path for privatization. It is the same ideology that drives Project 2025: shrink public systems, punish women for gaining independence, and reward the wealthy with a workforce that cannot afford to say no.

If the regime truly wanted to “Make America Healthy Again,” it would expand access to care workers, not cut it. Our country’s leaders need to push back. The public needs to push back. This is not bureaucratic housekeeping. It is a deliberate attempt to undermine the people who keep this country running.