RFK Jr. plans 10,000 HHS job cuts

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. plans to slash 10,000 full-time employees across different departments, as he works to reshape the nation’s federal health agencies, the department said Thursday.

Those job cuts are along with about 10,000 employees who opted to go away HHS since President Donald Trump took office, through voluntary separation offers. Combined, they’ll result in the federal health department shedding a few quarter of its workforce, shrinking it to 62,000 employees.

HHS is a $1.7 trillion agency that oversees vaccines and other medicines, scientific research, public health infrastructure, pandemic preparedness and food and tobacco products. The department also manages government-funded health take care of tens of millions of Americans – including seniors, disabled people and lower-income patients who depend on Medicare, Medicaid, and the Reasonably priced Care Act’s markets.

The department will cut jobs at divisions answerable for offering insurance to the poorest Americans, approving recent drugs, and responding to disease outbreaks, in accordance with The Wall Street Journal, which earlier reported the cuts.

The key restructuring comes because the U.S. grapples with considered one of the worst measles outbreaks in greater than 20 years, and as bird flu spreads in wild birds worldwide and is causing outbreaks in poultry and U.S. dairy cows, with several recent human cases.

HHS may also drop five of its 10 regional offices, however it said essential health services won’t be affected.

“We aren’t just reducing bureaucratic sprawl. We’re realigning the organization with its core mission and our recent priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic,” Kennedy said. “This Department will do more – lots more – at a lower cost to the taxpayer.”

The department said the cuts will save the federal government about $1.8 billion per 12 months. The federal government spent roughly $6.8 trillion in fiscal 2024.

Listed here are the workers the Trump administration plans to chop, in accordance with the Journal:

• 3,500 full-time employees from the Food and Drug Administration, or about 19% of its workforce
• 2,400 staff from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or roughly 18% of its staff
• 1,200 employees from the National Institutes of Health, or about 6% of its workforce
• 300 staff from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or roughly 4% of its employees

As a part of the restructuring, Kennedy is consolidating the department’s 28 current divisions into 15 recent ones, which HHS said will “centralize core functions” akin to human resources, information technology, procurement, external affairs and policy.

Amongst them is a brand new subdivision called the Administration for a Healthy America, which is able to mix offices in HHS that address addiction, toxic substances, mental health and occupational safety, amongst others, into one central office. That features the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health, Health Resources and Services Administration, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

HHS said combining those agencies will “improve coordination of health resources for low-income Americans” and can concentrate on areas including primary care, maternal and child health, mental health, environmental health, HIV/AIDS and workforce development.

The Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response, which is answerable for national disaster response and pandemic preparedness planning, will move under the CDC. Currently, ASPR is its own operating division in HHS. 

An HHS worker, who asked to stay anonymous for fear of retaliation, said staff haven’t yet been notified about whether or not they are impacted by the cuts. That uncertainty is scaring employees and raising questions that leadership can not seem to answer yet, the person said.

Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, said in a press release Thursday that “American families are going to be hurt by layoffs and closures of this magnitude, full stop.”

“The chaos that’s coming will guarantee that children and seniors fall through the cracks with deadly consequences,” he said.

Larry Levitt, executive vice chairman for health policy at KFF, said there’s “a profit to occasional reorganizations of HHS to realize higher coordination and efficiency,” which has happened under each Republican and Democratic administrations.

But he told CNBC that the plans are “not only a reorganization of HHS” as they involve cutting the federal workforce, which is able to ultimately affect government services.

“People and health care providers may find themselves waiting longer to get help and get their questions answered, and that may cause frustration and delays in services,” Levitt said. “Loads of what HHS employees do is behind the scenes oversight, working to forestall fraud and abuse and ensure health care programs provide the services they promise. With fewer people watching the shop at HHS, problems will begin to pop up.”

Cutting staff, consolidating divisions and centralizing certain functions are unlikely to supply as “many efficiency gains” because the Trump administration expects, said Genevieve Kanter, associate professor of public policy on the University of Southern California. That is because HHS is a various department that oversees agencies with specific needs, she added.

For instance, CMS’ information technology needs are likely “rather more stringent” than those of other health agencies since it oversees Medicare and Medicaid and manages the protected health information of tens of millions of Americans, Kanter said.

She said Kennedy’s recent subdivision appears to be “particularly inconsistent with the goal of streamlining” since the agencies being combined are so different but align along with his areas of interest in tackling chronic disease.

“It isn’t obvious that there is an operational reason for combining them because obviously regulating food additives could be very different from regulating fluoride within the water supply, addressing mental health needs, encouraging exercise amongst children, that are all kind of underneath that chronic diseases rubric,” Kanter said.

She noted that overall, inefficiencies in U.S. healthcare seem like more related to flaws in how the system is structured and arranged, not government administration like Thursday’s announcement suggests.

Kennedy, a distinguished vaccine skeptic, has made early moves that would impact immunization policy and further dampen uptake within the U.S. at a time when childhood vaccination rates are falling.