Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on March 27 announced major changes at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), including the merging of some divisions, in a bid to become more efficient, reported our friends at the Epoch Times.
Kennedy said that in addition to consolidating divisions, mass layoffs will reduce the full-time HHS workforce by about 25 percent from 82,000 workers.
Kennedy said that the transition will be painful but that “we are going to do more with less.”
The reorganization, which will take 28 divisions down to 15, is expected to save $1.8 billion a year, health officials said.
The division that will be most affected is the Food and Drug Administration, with about 3,500 workers being fired, according to HHS. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s workforce will be reduced by about 2,400 employees. Some 1,200 employees at the National Institutes of Health will no longer have jobs. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, another division, will move forward with about 300 fewer workers, reported Zachary Stieber for Epoch Health.
The CDC and NIH have long been in the crosshairs of the MAGA Movement for their lies justifying the overbearing and abusive handling of the COVID pandemic and the subsequent injuries sustained by millions of Americans who were subjected to forced vaccination using experimental mRNA vaccines.
During Secretary Kennedy’s run for President his incisive criticism of the vaccine mandates and Dr. Fauci’s role in the lies and abuses that accompanied them drew a substantial and committed following.
When Secretary Kennedy abandoned his campaign and endorsed President Trump he brought along a substantial group of supporters and added MAHA – Make America Healthy Again – to the MAGA coalition.
Kennedy said rates of chronic disease rose under the Biden administration even as the government grew. He pitched the changes as a way to refocus the agency on Americans’ health, but did not outline any specifics on how he would mediate rates of diabetes, heart disease or any other condition, complained the New York Times, without rebutting Secretary Kennedy’s central premise that spending more at HHS has not produced healthier Americans.
The New York Times reported the affected agencies have campuses outside of Washington and “tend to operate under their own authority,” which we note might be a central part of the need for reorganization, since they have no authority other than that derived from the President’s Article II authority under the Constitution.
Secretary Kennedy, who has long been at odds with the government health establishment, assailed them, and vowed to bring them to heel.
“When I arrived, I found that over half of our employees don’t even come to work,” he claimed. “H.H.S. has more than 100 communications offices and more than 40 I.T. departments and dozens of procurement offices and nine H.R. departments. In many cases, they don’t even talk to each other. They’re mainly operating in silos.
“In one case, defiant bureaucrats impeded the secretary’s office from accessing the closely guarded databases that might reveal the dangers of certain drugs and medical interventions,” Mr. Kennedy said.
Secretary Kennedy said the new division, the Administration for a Healthy America, would combine a number of agencies focused on substance abuse treatment and chemical safety, as well as the agency that administers courts that handle federal claims over vaccine injuries.
“We’re going to consolidate all of these departments and make them accountable to you, the American taxpayer and the American patient,” Mr. Kennedy said. “These goals will honor the aspirations of the vast majority of existing H.H.S. employees who actually yearn to make America healthy,” the New York Times somewhat grudgingly reported.
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