Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. unveiled plans Thursday to cut his workforce by about 10,000 current full-time employees and save an estimated $1.3 billion annually.
That move means that HHS’ total workforce will fall from 82,000 to 62,000 since the start of the second Trump administration after 10,000 other workers opted to leave government of their own accord, according to an announcement from the secretary.
“This will be a painful period for HHS as we downsize,” Kennedy, 71, admitted in a video message. “We’re keenly focused on paring away excess administrators while increasing the number of scientists and frontline health care providers so that we can do a better job.”
“I want this agency to once again be a revered scientific institution,” he added.
The restructuring plan consolidates 28 divisions of HHS into 15 main units, including a newly minted Administration for a Healthy America, under which agencies dealing with mental health, workplace safety, substance abuse and more will be combined.
Additionally, the plan will consolidate offices of human resources, procurement, policy, external affairs, and information technology operations. HHS will also cut five of its current 10 regional offices.
RFK Jr.’s plan also calls for a new Office of Strategy that consolidates the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) with the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ); as well as the movement of Administration for Community Living programs into other HHS agencies.
“We are streamlining HHS to make our agency more efficient and more effective,” Kennedy explained. “We will eliminate an entire alphabet soup of departments while preserving their core functions by merging them into a new organization called the Administration for a Healthy America or AHA.”
Kennedy also announced a new Assistant Secretary for Enforcement role, whose officeholder will work to crack down on waste in federal health programs.
“Over time, bureaucracies like HHS become wasteful and inefficient even when most of their staff are dedicated and competent civil servants,” Kennedy argued.
“This overhaul will be a win-win for taxpayers and for those that HHS serves. That’s the entire American public, because our goal is to Make America Healthy Again.”
HHS has a roughly $1.7 trillion annual budget and oversees a wide array of services for scientific research, medical regulation, government-funded health care and more.
The department is in charge of critical subagencies, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Kennedy’s plan would call for the CDC to absorb the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response, which deals with pandemic preparedness efforts.
Specific cuts that Kennedy planned include 3,500 job eliminations at the FDA, or 19% of its team; 2,400 at CDC, or 18% of is workforce; 1,200 at NIH, or 6% of its workforce; and 300 at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), or about 4% of its workers, according to a HHS fact sheet.
“When I arrived, I found that over half of our employees don’t even come to work,” Kennedy explained. “A few isolated divisions are neglecting public health altogether and seem only accountable to the industries that they’re supposed to be regulating.”
