Employees of the Massive Department of American Health and Social Services received Tuesday that their jobs were eliminated, being part of A radical overhaul Designed to considerably reduce agencies responsible for protecting and promoting Americans.
The cuts include researchers, scientists, doctors, support staff and senior managersLeaving the federal government without many of the main experts who have long guided American decisions on medical research, drug approvals and other problems.
“The revolution begins today!” Secretary of health Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote on social networks when he celebrated the oath of his last hits: Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, The new director National Institutes of Health and Martin Makary, The new Commissioner at Food and Drug Administration. The Kennedy post intervened just a few hours after the employees began to receive dismissal notices by email. He wrote later: “Our hearts go to those who have lost their jobs”, but said that the ministry must be “recalibrated” to underline the prevention of diseases.
Kennedy announced last week a plan to redo the department, which, through its agencies, is responsible for monitoring health trends and disease epidemics, the realization and financing of medical research and monitoring of food and drug safety, as well as the administration of health insurance programs for almost half of the country.
APIDO AP: layoffs begin in American health agencies responsible for research, disease monitoring and food regulation
Lisa Dwyer of the AP reports the endowment cuts at the FDA.
The plan would consolidate agencies that would supervise billions of dollars to Toxicomania services And community health centers under a new office called administration for healthy America.
APIDO AP: layoffs start to American health agencies responsible for monitoring the disease, looking for and regulating food
AP Julie Walker’s correspondent reports that layoffs begin in American health agencies responsible for monitoring the disease, looking for and regulating food.
HHS said dismissals should save $ 1.8 billion per year – approximately 0.1% – from the budget of 1.7 billion of dollars from the ministry, most of which are spent for health insurance coverage and Medicaid for millions of Americans.
Releases should reduce HHS to 62,000 jobs, reducing nearly a quarter of its staff – 10,000 jobs through layoffs and 10,000 other workers who have taken early retirement and voluntary separation offers. Many jobs are based in the Washington region, but also in Atlanta, where the United States is based on the control and prevention of diseases and in small offices across the country.
Some staff members began to obtain dismissal notices in their work reception boxes at 5 am, while others discovered that their use had been eliminated after keeping offices outside of Washington, Maryland and Atlanta to see if their badges still worked.
Some gathered in local cafes and lunch places after being turned back, discovering that they had been eliminated after decades of service.
We wondered aloud if it was a cruel joke of the fools of April. Adding to the confusion, some dismissal notices included instructions to file equal complaints on employment to a person who died in November.
At the NIH, the cuts included at least four directors of the 27 NIH institutes and centers who were put on administrative leave, and almost all the communication personnel was dismissed, according to an agency’s main manager, speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid reprisals.
An e-mail consulted by the Associated Press shows that some higher level employees of Bethesda, Maryland, a campus that have been placed on leave received a possible transfer to the Indian health service in places such as Alaska and given until the end of Wednesday to respond.
At least nine high -level CDC directors have been placed on leave and have also received reallocations at the Indian Health Service. Some public health experts outside the agency saw him as an attempt to resign from veteran agency heads.
At the CDC, union officials said that the programs had been eliminated due to smoking termination, lead poisoning, armed violence, asthma and air quality and occupational safety and health. The entire office managing the requests of the Freedom of Information Act has been closed. Infectious disease programs have also taken a hit, including programs that fight against epidemics in other countries and Laboratories focused on HIV and hepatitis in the United States and staff trying to eliminate tuberculosis.
At the FDA, dozens of staff members who regulate drugs, food, medical devices and tobacco products have received opinions, including the entire office responsible for writing new regulations for electronic cigarettes and other tobacco products. Opinions came The FDA tobacco chief was removed from his position. Elsewhere at the agency, more than a dozen press officers and communications supervisors have been informed that their job would be eliminated.
“The FDA, as we have known, is over, most managers with institutional knowledge and an in -depth understanding of product development and safety are no longer employed,” said former FDA commissioner Robert Califf in an online article. Califf resigned at the end of the Biden administration.
The dismissal notices came only a few days after President Donald Trump moved to the workers of their Collective negotiation rights to HHS and other government agencies.
“Congress and citizens must join us to postpone us,” said Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government employees. “Our health, safety and safety depend on a solid and fully personal public health system.”
Washington’s Democratic Senator Patty Murray predicted that the cuts will have ramifications when natural disasters strike or infectious diseases, such as the Epidemia of measles in progresspropagated.
“They can just as well rename him from the Ministry of Disease because their plan puts lives in serious danger,” Murray said on Friday.
The intention of the CDC cuts seems to be to create “a much smaller and infectious disease agency”, but it destroys a wide range of works and collaborations that have enabled local and national governments to be able to prevent deaths and respond to emergencies, said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of American Public Association.
The cuts were less drastic in the centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, where the republican administration of Trump wishes to avoid the appearance of debilitation of the health insurance programs which cover approximately half of the Americans, including many poor, disabled and elderly.
However, the impact will always be felt, the department reigning a large part of the workforce at the minority health office.
Jeffrey Grant, former deputy director of the CMS, said that the office was not part of a program of diversity, equity and inclusion, the type of republican administration of Trump sought to finish.
“This is not a DEI initiative. This meets people where they are and meet their specific health needs,” said Grant, who resigned last month and now helps to place CMS employees dismissed in new jobs.
Beyond dismissals in federal health agencies, the cuts start in the health and local health services due to a HHS move last week to withdraw more than $ 11 billion in silver related to COVID-19. Some health services have identified hundreds of jobs to be eliminated, “some of them overnight, some of them have already disappeared,” said Lori Tremmel Freeman, director general of the National Association of County and City Health HEALTH.
A coalition of general prosecutors continued the Trump administration On Tuesday, saying that the cuts are illegal, would reverse the progress of the opioid crisis and throw mental health systems in chaos.
HHS did not provide additional details or comments on Tuesday’s mass shots, but Thursday, it provided ventilation of certain cuts:
__3,500 jobs at The FDAWho inspects and establishes safety standards for medicines, medical devices and food.
__2 400 jobs at the CDC, which monitors epidemics of infectious diseases and works with public health agencies.
__1 200 jobs at NIH, the main global medical research agency.
__300 jobs at the CMS, which oversees the market for the affordable, Medicare and Medicaid law law.
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The editors of the Associated Press Lauran Neergaard, Amanda Seitz and Matthew Perrone in Washington and Mike Stobbe in New York contributed. ___
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