Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Secretary of the Ministry of Health and Social Services, or HHS, announced a major restructuring and a rif of the agency he directs.
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The Trump administration announced on Thursday a major restructuring of the United States Ministry of Health and Social Services which will reduce 20,000 full -time jobs.
The cuts include employees who have taken the Trump administration Road fork Early offer and retirement, plus an additional reduction of 10,000 jobs. 82,000 to 62,000 HHS work A press release from the agency.
Restructuring also includes a reorganization of the many HHS divisions to reduce them from 28 to 15.
“We are not only reducing bureaucratic sprawl. We realize the organization with its main mission and our new priorities in the inversion of the chronic disease epidemic,” said HHS secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. said in the press release. “This department will be more – much more – at a lower cost for the taxpayer.”
HHS is the umbrella agency which includes the centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health and other smaller divisions.
Restructuring will include the creation of a new administration for a healthy America, or AHA, intended to “more effectively coordinate chronic care and disease prevention programs”. He will consolidate several existing agencies, emphasizing primary care, maternal and child health, mental health and HIV / AIDS.
The cuts include 3,500 full -time employees at the FDA, 2,400 at CDC, 1,200 at NIH and 300 to CM An HHS information sheet. He indicates that new FDA job cuts will not affect medicines, medical devices, examiners or inspectors. Reorganization will have no impact on Medicare or Medicaid.
HHS says job cuts will save $ 1.8 billion. The agency currently has a budget of nearly 2 dollars billions, the majority of which pays for advantages for Americans covered by Medicaid and Medicare.
These cuts align with President Trump’s vision of radically Reduce the size and scope of the federal government – An effort that has been directed so far by Elon Musk and his Ministry of Effectiveness of the Government or Doge.
“There is an advantage to the occasional reorganizations of HHS. But, these are also staff and programs,” Larry Levitt wrote the research organization on non -partisan KFF health on social networks.
“A large part of what HHS employees are doing is behind the scenes, to prevent fraud and abuse and guarantee that health care programs provide promised services. Federal labor reductions could cause more wasted expenses on the road.”
In a Video on social networks Published Thursday morning, secretary Kennedy described the HHS as dysfunctional and sprawling bureaucracy.
In the video, he hesitated between the praise of his department staff and their work and accused them of harming the health of the Americans.
“When I arrived, I found that more than half of our employees do not even come to work,” he said. (HHS did not immediately answer the question of whether the employees were in approved telework, placed on administrative leave or something else.)
“HHS has more than 100 communication offices and more than 40 IT services and dozens of supply offices and nine HR services. In many cases, they don’t even talk to each other.”
He described the “small fiefdoms” in the HHS to be “so isolated and territorial that they really amalent our medical data from patients and sell it for profit”, although it has not offered additional details.
“While public health decreases, some isolated divisions completely neglect public health and only seem to be responsible for the industries they are supposed to regulate,” he said, without naming the divisions or the industries it was referring to.
Senator Angela Alsobrooks, D-MD., Wrote in a press release that the reduction plan of 20,000 HHS jobs was “dangerous and deadly”.
“These mass licensees with health and human services will cost human lives,” said Alsobrooks. “I will do everything I can to fight this.”
Senator Bill Cassidy, r-la., Posted on X That he would like to see HHS better work on things such as the rapid approval of drugs and the improvement of health insurance services. “I can’t wait to hear how this reorganization strengthens these objectives.”
And one of Kennedy’s allies in the Make America Healthy Again movement, writer and entrepreneur Calley means wrote a post Praking restructuring: “Crazy expenses and health care staff are in fact the cause of our bad health results.”
The cuts are vibrated by health agencies, according to three current NIH employees who did not want to be identified due to fears of remuneration.
“People are exhausted. More than concern about their own livelihoods, people are afraid for the future of the NIH (and) of their science,” said an employee. “I hear people expressing a little lukewarm, hope they will be spared, a resignation that they will probably be dismissed, and many people are not even sure that the NIH will be a hospital place even if they survive the Rif.”
Another NIH employee said that the agency had lost approximately 4,400 employees of around 18,000. These are in particular 1,200 in the RIF today, 1,200 probative employees who have been previously and around 2,000 people who have taken an early retirement, the acquisition or supply of the road fork.
People will discover if they lose their jobs on Friday and that the RIFs will take effect in May, said the person, NIH employees are preparing for more possible cuts that could occur if Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the new director of nih entering, ordered his own reorganization of the NIH.
A third NIH employee said that RIF mainly affected administrative staff, such as HR, IT, purchases and finances.
“It is impossible for me to imagine that cuts of this size will not affect the negative functions substantially,” said Jeremy Berg of the University of Pittsburgh, who was director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, which is part of the NIH NIH to carry out its important missions, “he added.”
The restructuring also displays the administration of strategic preparation and response – which manages medical responses to natural disasters and public health emergencies – of the declaration directly from the Secretary of Health to be hosted under CDC. Dawn O’Connell, former ASPR chief in Biden administration, told NPR that the decision could limit its scope. “It is curious for me that they put us in CDCs at a time when they want the CDC to focus on the work of infectious diseases.”
Under the Biden administration, ASPR has been raised in an operational division so that it can respond more agile to emergencies, in response to the lessons learned during the cocoat, known as O’Connell.
“I do not regret a new administration that happens to determine if we have understood. But this idea of the wholesale loss of the progress we have made and that we fought will put them back,” she said.
Dr. Georges Benjamin, leader of the American Public Health Association, said in a press release that the restructuring of the HHS, associated with a $ 11 billion In the financing of the health services of states and states announced earlier this week, goes against the objective of improving health in the United States
“This is an absurd rearrangement of agencies under their charge and an excuse to devastate the labor market for financial reasons,” said Benjamin. “This will increase the morbidity and mortality of our population, will increase health costs and undermine our economy.”
The union representing numerous federal workers, the National Union of Treasury Employees, published a statement on Thursday condemning the cuts and claiming that it would “response”.
“If this disastrous plan is carried out and the agency loses 10,000 additional employees, as proposed, the impact of public health services across the country will be devastating,” said NTEU president Doreen Greenwald.
Do you have any information you want to share on current changes between federal health agencies? Contact these authors via encrypted communications: Selena Simmons-Duffin @ selena.02, Pien Huang @ Pienhuang.88 and Rob Stein @ Robstein.22.