Nearly 40 members of the Senate Democratic caucus sent a letter Tuesday to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., demanding answers about the mass firing of federal health workers at HHS and about the layoffs’ potential impact on Americans’ health and well-being.

Kennedy has claimed that the agency consolidations and Department of Government Efficiency-assisted cuts, affecting thousands of HHS employees, will be a “win-win.” Senators want to know why he thinks that.

WHY IT MATTERS

In addition to the 10,000 layoffs, which began on April 1, HHS is also encouraging buyouts and early retirements of another 10,000 people – representing nearly 25% of the HHS workforce. The reductions are part of a sweeping agency transformation that is expected to consolidate 28 department divisions into 15 and reduce its regional offices from 10 to five, according to a statement on the Senate Finance Committee website.

Workforce reductions of that scale will not “Make America Healthy Again,” said Sen. Mark Warner, D-Virginia, who penned the letter alongside Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York; Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon; Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont; and 34 of their Democratic colleagues.

“Despite repeated requests from members of Congress, including all signers of this letter, you have not provided any meaningful information related to the department’s decision-making or the impacts it will have on HHS programs,” the senators said. 

“Most notably, members of Congress have not received any information on the processes or assumptions you are relying on to measure the impact of the reorganization of the department and these firings will have on the programs and services hundreds of millions of Americans rely on.”

The senators qualified Kennedy’s actions as “reckless disregard,” which they said would fall hardest on underserved communities. 

As part of the agency restructuring, HHS announced it would dismantle entire divisions, “like those focused on the well-being of seniors and people with disabilities and research to promote healthcare quality” and lay off thousands of workers at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institutes of Health, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Administration for Children and Families, and more. 

The senators outlined a series of concerns, from the slowing of development of new treatments and cures for diseases and impacts on Americans’ ability to access safe and effective medications to suffocating direct oversight and support for state- and community-based services and generally making care “less safe, less affordable and harder to find for millions of working-class families.”

In their letter the senators also said:

• “These cuts worsen the harm you are already inflicting on seniors, people with disabilities, and other vulnerable communities. 
• “These cuts worsen the harm you are already inflicting on children. 
• “These cuts worsen the backlogs you have already created in the development of new treatments and cures. 
• “These cuts weaken access to primary medical care and dismantle the backbone of our current primary care system. 
• “These cuts leave communities entirely unprepared to manage ongoing public health concerns and emerging threats. 
• “These cuts worsen the effects of the opioid epidemic and affect access to life-saving mental health services. 
• “These cuts worsen existing health disparities in native communities. 
• “These cuts worsen the heightened risks you have created for patient care and safety.” 

The senators requested responses to their questions by April 4.

“The American people deserve the ‘radical transparency’ you have repeatedly promised them, yet failed to deliver at every opportunity,” they said.

THE LARGER TREND

The overhaul will result in a total downsizing from 82,000 to 62,000 full-time employees at HHS. These workforce reductions will save $1.8 billion “without impacting critical services,” according to Kennedy.

“We aren’t just reducing bureaucratic sprawl,” he said in a statement announcing the changes, “we are realigning the organization with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic.”

ON THE RECORD

“You continue to deny visibility to the American public, despite your oft-repeated commitment to ‘radical transparency,'” the senators said in their letter to Kennedy. “You have promised that HHS will do more for the American people at a lower cost to the taxpayer, yet you have not provided anything to substantiate these claims, despite repeated requests from Congress to do so.

“If you do not reverse course, you will do irreparable damage to our nation’s human services, healthcare delivery, public health and scientific infrastructure – making Americans sicker and leaving our communities ill-prepared for future threats.”

Andrea Fox is senior editor of Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.