Senior leaders across the Department of Health and Human Services were put on leave and countless other employees lost their jobs Tuesday as the Trump administration began a sweeping purge of the agencies that oversee government health programs.At one HHS office in Rockville, Maryland, long lines grew as workers were screened to determine whether they were still employed.
“When you get here, it is horrible,” one FDA employee wrote, according to messages reviewed by The Washington Post.
At the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, some employees who were laid off were told to contact Anita Pinder, former director of the Office of Equal Opportunity & Civil Rights at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, with discrimination complaints. Pinder died last year.
A sense of havoc descended on agencies that oversee food and drug safety, manage the nation’s response to infectious-disease threats and drive biomedical research. The broad outlines of an unprecedented downsizing of the federal health workforce were announced last week — a staff reduction from 82,000 to 62,000 that Kennedy said will save $1.8 billion annually — but the specifics were unclear until Tuesday.
HHS last week projected it would lay off about 10,000 people in addition to the 10,000 who took buyouts or retirement offers….
“The Trump administration is withholding tens of millions of dollars from Planned Parenthood clinics that provide contraception, STI testing and other health services to low-income Americans,” Politico reports.
image of HHS employee’s outside the Wash. DC Office…Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
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