Mass layoffs are underway in La Nación
Employees from the entire Department of Human Health and Services.
The cuts include researchers, scientists, doctors, support personnel and higher leaders, leaving the federal government without many of the key experts that have long guided the United States decisions about medical research, drug approvals and other problems.
“The revolution begins today!” The Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote on social networks while celebrating the sworn of his last hiring: Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the new director of the National Institutes of Health and Martin Makary, the new commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. Kennedy’s publication occurred only a few hours after employees began receiving dismissal notices sent by email. He later wrote “our hearts are with those who have lost their work”, but said that the department must be “recalibrated” to emphasize disease prevention.
Kennedy announced a plan last week to rebuild the department, which, through its agencies, is responsible for tracing health trends and disease outbreaks, realization and financing of medical research, and monitoring food safety and medicine, as well as administering health insurance programs for almost half of the country.
The Washington Post through Getty Images
The plan would consolidate the agencies that would supervise billions of dollars for addiction services and community health centers under a new office called Administration for a healthy America.
The HHS said that the dismissals are expected to save $ 1.8 billion annually, around 0.1%, of the budget of $ 1.7 billion of the department, most of which are spent on health insurance coverage of Medicare and Medicaid for millions of Americans.
The layoffs are expected to reduce HHS to 62,000 positions, raising almost a quarter of their staff: 10,000 jobs through layoffs and another 10,000 workers who took early retirement offers and voluntary separation. Many of the works are found in the Washington area, but also in Atlanta, where the US disease control and prevention centers are based., And on smaller offices throughout the country.
Some employees began receiving termination warnings in their work input trays at 5 am, while others discovered that their works had been eliminated after standing in long lines outside the offices in Washington, Maryland and Atlanta to see if their badges still worked. Some gathered in local coffee shops and lunch places after being rejected, discovering that they had been eliminated after decades of service.
One wondered out loud if it was a cruel joke of April Fools’ Day.
In the NIH, the cuts included at least four directors of the 27 institutes and centers of the NIH who were put on administrative license, and the almost whole communications staff were completed, according to a senior leader of the agency, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid compensation.
An email seen by News shows that some higher level employees of Bethesda, Maryland, to the campus, which were licensed, were offered a possible transfer to the health service of India in places that include Alaska and were given until the end of Wednesday to respond.
At least nine high -level CDC directors were placed licensed and also offered reallocations to the health service of India. Some public health experts outside the agency saw him as an attempt for the agency’s veteran leaders to resign.
In the CDC, the union officials said the programs eliminated due to the dismissals centered on smoking, poisoning by lead, armed violence, asthma and air quality, and occupational safety and health. The entire office that manages the requests of the Freedom of Information Law was closed. Infectious disease programs also had a success, including programs that fight against outbreaks in other countries and HIV -centered laboratories and hepatitis in the United States and personnel who try to eliminate tuberculosis.
Kevin Dietsch through Getty Images
In the FDA, dozens of employees regulating drugs, food, medical devices and tobacco products received notices, including the entire office responsible for writing new regulations for electronic cigarettes and other tobacco products. The notices arrived when the FDA tobacco chief was removed from his position. In another part of the agency, more than a dozen press officers and communications supervisors were notified that their work would be eliminated.
“The FDA, as we know, is finished, with most leaders with institutional knowledge and a deep understanding of the development and safety of products no longer employed,” said former FDA commissioner, Robert Califf, in an online publication. Califf resigned at the end of the Biden administration.
The dismissal notices occurred a few days after President Donald Trump moved to strip workers of their collective bargaining rights in the HHS and other agencies throughout the government.
The Democratic Senator Patty Murray of Washington predicted that the cuts will have ramifications when natural disasters hit or infectious diseases, such as the ongoing measles outbreak, spread.
“They could also be renamed the disease department because their plan is to put lives in great danger,” Murray said on Friday.
The intention of the cuts to the CDC seems to be to create “a much smaller infectious disease agency”, but is destroying a wide range of work and collaborations that have allowed local and national governments to prevent deaths and respond to emergencies, said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association.
The cuts were less drastic in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services, where Trump’s Republican administration wants to avoid the appearance of weakening health insurance programs that cover approximately half of the Americans, many of them poor, disabled and elderly.
But the impact will still feel, and the department reduces much of the workforce in the minority health office.
Jeffrey Grant, a former CMS deputy director, said the office is not part of a program of diversity, equity and inclusion, of the type that Trump’s republican administration has tried to finish.
“This is not an initiative ofi. This is to meet people where they are and meet their specific health needs,” said Grant, who resigned last month and now helps to place CMS employees dismissed in new jobs.
Beyond dismissals in federal health agencies, cuts are beginning in state and local health departments as a result of an HHS movement last week to withdraw more than $ 11 billion in money related to COVID-19. Some health departments have identified hundreds of jobs that can be eliminated: “Some of them during the night, some of them have already left,” said Lori Tremmel Freeman, executive director of the National Association of County and Municipal Health Officials.
A coalition of state general prosecutors sued Tuesday to the Trump administration, arguing that the cuts are illegal, would reverse progress in the opioid crisis and throw mental health systems into chaos.
HHS has not provided additional details or comments on the massive shots on Tuesday, but on Thursday it provided a breakdown of some of the cuts.
—3,500 jobs in the FDA, which inspects and establishes safety standards for medicines, medical devices and food.
—2,400 jobs in CDC, which monitors outbreaks of infectious diseases and works with public health agencies throughout the country.
—1,200 jobs at NIH, the leading medical research agency in the world.
—300 jobs in the CMS, which supervises the market of the Health Care Law at low price, Medicare and Medicaid.
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The writers of News Lauran Diegaard, Amanda Seitz and Matthew Perrone in Washington and Mike Stobbe in New York contributed.
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The Department of Health and Sciences of News receives support from the Science and Educational Media Group of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.