The United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and its subsidiary agencies have started sending out layoff notices since Tuesday, with an estimated total of up to ten thousand employees expected to be affected.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. criticized the department on Thursday, calling it an inefficient “giant bureaucratic organization” that receives a budget of $1.7 trillion annually but has failed to “improve the health of the American people.” He stated, “I now promise you that we will do more with less resources.”
The Health Department and its subsidiary agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, are responsible for tracking health and disease outbreak trends, conducting and funding medical research, monitoring food and drug safety, and managing healthcare insurance plans for nearly half of the nation’s population.
The layoffs at the Health Department are expected to affect nearly a quarter of the employees, including the termination of 10,000 staff positions and early retirement or voluntary resignation of another 10,000 employees, reducing the department’s workforce to 62,000 positions.
According to insiders, at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which includes 27 research institutes and centers, at least four directors have been placed on administrative leave, and almost all communication staff have been dismissed.
The National Institutes of Health is a world-leading institution in health and medicine. The staff cuts are occurring on the first day of work for its new director, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya.
Furthermore, due to the Health Department withdrawing over $11 billion in COVID-19-related funds from state and local health departments last week, local agencies have also started laying off employees. Some health departments have confirmed that hundreds of job positions have been eliminated due to funding cuts.
(Adapted from the report by the Associated Press)