Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Announces HHS Will Slash THOUSANDS Of Jobs From Health Agencies

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Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced the department will slash approximately 10,000 full-time employees.

“We are streamlining HHS to make our agency more efficient and more effective. We will eliminate an entire alphabet soup of departments, while preserving their core functions by merging them into a new organization called the Administration for a Healthy America or AHA,” RFK Jr. said.

“This overhaul will improve the health of the entire nation — to Make America Healthy Again,” he added.

WATCH:

From The Wall Street Journal:

Kennedy on Thursday said the agency would ax 10,000 full-time employees spread across departments tasked with responding to disease outbreaks, approving new drugs, providing insurance for the poorest Americans and more. The worker cuts are in addition to roughly 10,000 employees who opted to leave the department since President Trump took office, through voluntary separation offers, according to the department.

The voluntary departures and the plan, if fully implemented, would result in the department shedding about one-quarter of its workforce, shrinking to 62,000 federal health workers. It will also lose five of its 10 regional offices. HHS said essential health services won’t be affected.

“We’re going to eliminate an entire alphabet soup of departments and agencies while preserving their core function,” Kennedy said in a video posted on X. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier Thursday on the planned cuts.

Key to the reorganization is a plan to centralize the department’s communications, procurement, human resources, information technology and policy planning—efforts currently distributed throughout the health department’s divisions and even their branches. Doing so will dramatically reshape how the health agencies function. In the past, leaders of major health agencies within HHS—such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and Food and Drug Administration—considered themselves somewhat independent from the White House and even the health secretary.

Per Fortune:

HHS provided on Thursday a breakdown of cuts at the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services:

— 3,500 jobs at the FDA, which inspects and sets safety standards for medications, medical devices and foods.

— 2,400 jobs at the CDC, which monitors for infectious disease outbreaks and works with public health agencies nationwide.

— 1,200 jobs at the NIH, the world’s leading public health research arm.

— 300 jobs at CMS, which oversees the Affordable Care Act marketplace, Medicare and Medicaid.

In its statement, HHS said it anticipates the changes will save $1.8 billion per year, but it did not provide a breakdown or any other details about the savings. The department has a $1.7 trillion annual budget, most of which is dedicated to funding Medicare and Medicaid programs used by older, disabled and poor Americans.

Beyond losing workers, Kennedy said he will shut down entire agencies, some of which were established by Congress decades ago.

Several agencies will be folded into a new Administration for a Healthy America, Kennedy said.



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