Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the Division of Well being and Human Companies, or HHS, introduced a significant restructuring and RIF of the company he leads.
Jason C. Andrew/Bloomberg/Getty Photographs
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Jason C. Andrew/Bloomberg/Getty Photographs
The Trump administration Thursday introduced a significant restructuring of the U.S. Division of Well being and Human Companies that may reduce 20,000 full-time jobs.
The cuts embody staff who’ve taken the Trump administration’s Fork within the Street supply and early retirement, plus a further discount in drive of 10,000 jobs. It is going to take the HHS workforce from 82,000 to 62,000, in accordance with the HHS press launch.
The restructuring additionally features a reorganization of HHS’s many divisions to cut back them from 28 to fifteen.
“We aren’t simply decreasing bureaucratic sprawl. We’re realigning the group with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the persistent illness epidemic,” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. mentioned within the press launch. “This Division will do extra — much more — at a decrease price to the taxpayer.”
HHS is the umbrella company that features the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention, the Facilities for Medicare and Medicaid Companies, the Meals and Drug Administration, the Nationwide Institutes of Well being and different smaller divisions.
The restructuring will embody the creation of a brand new Administration for a Wholesome America, or AHA, meant to “extra effectively coordinate persistent care and illness prevention packages.” It is going to consolidate a number of current companies, with a concentrate on main care, maternal and baby well being, psychological well being and HIV/AIDS.
The cuts embody 3,500 full-time staff on the FDA, 2,400 on the CDC, 1,200 at NIH, and 300 at CMS, in accordance with an HHS reality sheet. It states that the brand new job cuts on the FDA is not going to have an effect on drug, medical machine, or meals reviewers or inspectors. The reorganization is not going to affect Medicare or Medicaid.
HHS states that the job cuts will save $1.8 billion. The company at the moment has a price range of almost $2 trillion, the vast majority of which pays for advantages for People coated by Medicaid and Medicare.
These cuts align with President Trump’s imaginative and prescient of drastically decreasing the scale and scope of the federal authorities — an effort that has been led to this point by Elon Musk and his Division of Authorities Effectivity or DOGE.
In a social media video posted Thursday morning, Secretary Kennedy characterised HHS as a dysfunctional, sprawling paperwork.
Within the video, he vacillated between praising his division’s employees and their work and accusing them of harming People’ well being.
“After I arrived, I discovered that over half of our staff do not even come to work,” he mentioned. (HHS didn’t instantly reply to a query about whether or not the workers have been in authorised teleworking preparations, positioned on administrative depart or one thing else.)
“HHS has greater than 100 communications workplaces and greater than 40 IT departments and dozens of procurement workplaces and 9 H.R. departments. In lots of instances, they do not even speak to one another.”
He described “little fiefdoms” inside HHS of being “so insulated and territorial that they really hoard our affected person medical information and promote it for revenue to one another,” although he did not supply additional particulars.
“Whereas public well being declines, a number of remoted divisions are neglecting public well being altogether and appear solely accountable to the industries that they are imagined to be regulating,” he mentioned, with out naming the divisions or industries he was referencing.
Senator Angela Alsobrooks, D-Md., wrote in a press release that the plan to chop 20,000 jobs from HHS was “harmful and lethal.” Many well being companies are headquartered in Maryland, together with the Meals and Drug Administration, the Facilities for Medicare and Medicaid Companies, and the Nationwide Institutes of Well being.
Alsobrooks additionally confronted Kennedy throughout his affirmation listening to about feedback he’d made asserting that the childhood vaccine schedule ought to be adjusted relying on a toddler’s race.
“These mass layoffs at Well being and Human Companies will price human lives,” Alsobrooks mentioned. “I’ll do all I can to combat this.”
“There’s a profit to occasional reorganizations of HHS. However, that is additionally about large employees and program reductions,” Larry Levitt of the nonpartisan well being analysis group KFF wrote on social media.
“Loads of what HHS staff do is behind the scenes oversight, to stop fraud and abuse and guarantee well being care packages present the providers promised. Reductions within the federal workforce may end in extra wasteful spending down the street.”
Have info you wish to share in regards to the ongoing modifications throughout federal well being companies? Attain out to those authors through encrypted communications: Selena Simmons-Duffin @selena.02, Pien Huang @pienhuang.88 and Rob Stein @robstein.22.