The Ministry of Health and Social Services confirmed Thursday that around 10,000 full -time employees will soon lose their jobs, in addition to the 10,000 people who have already left the agency in recent months thanks to buyout or early pensions.
This puts the total of employees at around 62,000 people – against 82,000 at the start of the Trump administration. The agency supervises the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services – among other divisions.
The Ministry of Health and Social Services is visible in Washington on April 5, 2009.
Alex Brandon / AP
“We are not only reducing bureaucratic sprawl. We are realizing the organization with its main mission and our new priorities in the inversion of the chronic illness epidemic,” HHS secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in a press release on Thursday.
“This overhaul will be a winner for taxpayers and for those that HHS serves. It is all the American public, because our goal is to make America again healthy,” said Kennedy.
The candidate for the Secretary of Health and Social Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. culminates while President Donald Trump is organizing a meeting of the cabinet in the hall of the White House cabinet, on March 24, 2025, in Washington.
Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images
Kennedy said the latest discounts allowed taxpayers to save $ 1.8 billion per year. The cuts will reduce the number of regional offices – from 10 to five. He will also combine the 28 current HHS divisions in 15 divisions, including a new focus on the “Make America Healthy Again” movement of Kennedy, to be appointed the administration of a healthy America.
“We are going to eliminate a whole alphabet soup from departments and agencies, while preserving their basic functions by merging them in a new organization called the administration for a healthy America,” Kennedy said in a video by explaining the cuts on Thursday.
Despite the reduction of almost a quarter of the agency, the ministry maintains that restructuring will have no impact on “critical services”.
The real impact of the last series of cups remains to be seen. Already, the cuts have struck the best researchers from the Alzheimer’s research center of the National Institute and detectives of the disease that identify new infectious diseases.
Will McDuffie de ABC News contributed to this report.
