America Fearing the Worst? Kennedy Jr. Slashes 10,000 Jobs in Major HHS Overhaul| Cancer Chaos in US

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Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced a sweeping restructuring of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), cutting 10,000 jobs and shutting down entire agencies. The move, which Kennedy described as a necessary step to eliminate inefficiency, will reduce the department’s workforce from 82,000 to 62,000.     #USHealthCare #RobertKennedyJr #HHSOverhaul #JobCuts #HealthReform #USJobs #GovernmentReform #HealthcarePolicy #HealthDepartment #HealthCareCrisis #KennedyLeadership #PublicHealth #USPolitics #EconomicImpact #HealthNews #HealthcareSystem #JobLosses #PolicyChange #HealthAdministration #GovernmentJobs  ~ED.102~HT.408~GR.124~

Transcript

00:00Our lifespan has dropped, so Americans now live six years shorter than Europeans.

00:06We are the sickest nation in the world, and we have the highest rate of chronic disease.

00:11The entire federal workforce is downsizing now, so this will be a painful period for

00:17HHS as we downsize from 82,000 full-time employees to around 62,000.

00:24Our department is filled, for the most part, with competent, conscientious public servants,

00:29and yet the agency has been inefficient as a whole.

00:32Hey, everybody, I'd like to share with you a paradox that I've encountered here in Washington,

00:38D.C. as the new secretary of HHS.

00:41Our department is filled, for the most part, with competent, conscientious public servants,

00:46and yet the agency has been inefficient as a whole.

00:50Over the past four years during the Biden administration, HHS's budget increased by

00:5538 percent, and its staffing increased by 17 percent, but all that money has failed

01:01to improve the health of Americans.

01:04In fact, the rate of chronic disease and cancer increased dramatically as our department has

01:10grown.

01:11Our lifespan has dropped, so Americans now live six years shorter than Europeans.

01:16We are the sickest nation in the world, and we have the highest rate of chronic disease.

01:22The U.S. ranks last among 40 developed nations in terms of health, but we spend two to three

01:27times more per capita than those nations.

01:30As secretary, I now understand why all this money is not improving our health.

01:35HHS is a sprawling bureaucracy that encompasses literally hundreds of departments, committees,

01:42and other offices.

01:44You know how bureaucracies work.

01:46Every time a new issue arises, they tack on another committee.

01:50This leads to tremendous waste and duplication, and worst of all, a loss of any unified sense

01:55of mission.

01:56The resulting pandemonium has injured American health and damaged department morale.

02:03When I arrived, I found that over half of our employees don't even come to work.

02:07HHS has more than 100 communications offices and more than 40 IT departments and dozens

02:13of procurement offices and nine HR departments.

02:17In many cases, they don't even talk to each other.

02:20They're mainly operating in silos.

02:22Sometimes these sub-agencies work at cross-purposes with each other.

02:27Some of these little fiefdoms, for example, are so insulated and territorial that they

02:31actually hoard our patient medical data and sell it for profit to each other.

02:38Instead of remedying the chronic disease crisis, perverse incentives have administrators checking

02:42boxes and creating their own homework while public health declines.

02:47A few isolated divisions are neglecting public health altogether and seem only accountable

02:52to the industries that they're supposed to be regulating.

02:56In one case, defiant bureaucrats imputed the secretary's office from accessing the closely

03:02guarded databases that might reveal the dangers of certain drugs and medical interventions.

03:07I have some good news, though.

03:09As part of President Trump's Doge workforce reduction initiative, we're going to streamline

03:14HHS to make our agency more efficient and more effective.

03:19We're going to imbue the agency with a clear sense of mission to radically improve the

03:23health of Americans and to improve agency morale.

03:28We're going to eliminate an entire alphabet soup of departments and agencies while preserving

03:33their core functions by merging them into a new organization called the Administration

03:39for a Healthy America, or AHA.

03:41We have two goals.

03:42The first is obvious, to save the taxpayer money by making our department more efficient.

03:47And the second is to radically improve our quality of service.

03:51I want to promise you now that we're going to do more with less.

03:56No American is going to be left behind.

03:59Our key services delivered through Medicare and Medicaid, the FDA and CDC, and other agencies

04:06will enter a new era of responsiveness and a new era of effectiveness.

04:11We're going to consolidate all of these departments and make them accountable to you, the American

04:16taxpayer and the American patient.

04:19These goals will honor the aspirations of the vast majority of existing HHS employees

04:24who actually yearn to make America healthy.

04:27Twenty-eight great divisions will become 15.

04:31The entire federal workforce is downsizing now, so this will be a painful period for

04:36HHS as we downsize from 82,000 full-time employees to around 62,000.

04:45We're keenly focused on paring away excess administrators while increasing the number

04:50of scientists and front-line health providers so that we can do a better job for the American

04:55people.

04:56We're going to streamline our agency and eliminate the redundancies and invite everyone to align

05:01behind a simple, bold mission.

05:04I want every HHS employee to wake up every morning asking themselves, what can I do to

05:10restore American health today?

05:13I want to empower everyone in the HHS family to have a sense of purpose and pride and a

05:19sense of personal agency and responsibility to this larger goal.

05:23We're going to save taxpayers nearly $2 billion a year, and we're going to return HHS to its

05:28original commitment to public health and gold standard science.

05:33I want this agency to be once again a revered scientific institution that once made HHS

05:40the envy of the world.

05:41I want everyone who works here to be proud of this agency, to be proud of their work,

05:46to feel a renewed inspiration and their own sense of responsibility for our success in

05:52restoring America to good health.

05:55Streamlining HHS is part of a shift to new priorities, especially ending the chronic

06:00disease epidemic with clean water, safe food, effective medicine, good science, radical

06:07transparency, and a healthy environment.

06:10I think most Americans would agree with me that throwing more money at health care isn't

06:14going to solve the problem, or it would have solved it already.

06:18Obviously, what we've been doing hasn't worked.

06:21That's why we're making this dramatic overhaul, but the real overhaul is even bigger.

06:26The real overhaul is improving the health of the entire nation to make America healthy again.

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