Critical Disease Tracking Teams Gutted as Health Agency Layoffs Begin

The massive U.S. Department of Health and Human Services began to send notices of dismissal to its employees on Tuesday. This major overhaul is expected to result in the eventual layoff of up to 10,000 workers.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Health Secretary, announced last week a plan to restructure HHS. Through its agencies, HHS is responsible for tracking trends in health and disease outbreaks. It also funds medical research and monitors the safety of foods and medicines.

The plan consolidates agencies that oversee billions in funding for addiction services, community health centers, and other programs across the nation under a newly created office called Administration for a Healthy America.

HHS will lose 62,000 jobs as a result of the layoffs. This is a reduction of nearly a quarter.

Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat Senator, predicted that the cuts would have ramifications in the event of a natural disaster or the spread of infectious diseases like the current measles epidemic.

Murray told reporters on Friday that their plan puts lives at risk.

HHS’s decision last week to withdraw more than $ 11 billion in COVID-19 funds has led to cuts at state and local departments. Local and state officials are still assessing its impact. However, some health departments have already identified hundreds of positions that will be cut due to the loss of funding. “Some of them over night, and some of them already gone,” Lori Tremmel Freeman said, chief executive of National Association of County and City Health Officials.

The union representatives of HHS employees were notified on Thursday that between 8,000 and 10,000 employees would be terminated. The leadership of the department will focus on positions in finance, human resources, procurement and information technology. The focus of layoffs will be positions in “high-cost regions” or those that are deemed redundant.

Kennedy called the department that he supervises an “inefficient, sprawling bureaucracy” on Thursday in a video announcing its restructuring. He also said that the $1.7 trillion budget of the department “has failed to increase the health status of Americans.”

Kennedy promised, “I’m going to make sure we do more with less.”

HHS provided an overview of some of these cuts on Thursday.

• The Food and Drug Administration has 3,500 positions. It inspects and sets standards of safety for medical devices, foods, and medications.
• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDCP) has 2,400 positions. They monitor for infectious disease outbreaks and work with public health agencies across the country.
• The National Institutes of Health is the leading medical and health research institution in the world.
• The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMMS), which oversees the Affordable Care Act Marketplace, Medicare, and Medicaid, has 300 new jobs.

Most CDC employees are not unionized. However, interest has increased this year, as Trump’s administration is taking steps to reduce federal staff. Around 2,000 CDC workers in Atlanta were members of the local bargaining unit of the American Federation of Government employees. This week, hundreds of others who had applied to join have been added.

Trump signed a new executive order on Thursday evening that will end collective bargaining in a number of federal agencies, including the CDC and other agencies involved with health.

The erosion of collective bargaining rights was decried by some Democrat lawmakers.

“President Trump’s brazen attempt to strip the majority of federal employees of their union rights robs these workers of their hard-fought protections. This will only give Elon Musk more power to dismantle the people’s government with as little resistance from dedicated civil servants as possible — further weakening the federal government’s ability to serve the American people,” according to a joint statement Friday by Rep. Gerald Connolly and Rep. Bobby Scott, both of Virginia.