Tag Archives: Health and Human Services Department

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has spoken of an “existential threat” that he said can destroy the nation. “We have the highest chronic disease burden of any country in the world,” Mr. Kennedy said at a hearing in January before the Senate confirmed him as the secretary of Health and Human Services. And on Monday he is starting a tour in …

As the Trump administration moves to dismantle international public health safeguards, pull funding from local health departments and legitimize health misinformation, some experts now fear that the country is setting the stage for a long-term measles resurgence. If federal health officials do not change course, large multistate outbreaks like the one that has torn through West Texas, jumping to neighboring …

The Trump administration on Friday rejected a Biden plan that would have required Medicare and Medicaid to cover obesity drugs and expanded access for millions of people. Under the law that established Medicare’s Part D drug benefits, the program was forbidden from paying for drugs for “weight loss.” The Biden administration’s proposal last November had attempted to sidestep that ban …

The extensive layoffs of federal health workers that began on Tuesday will greatly curtail the scope and influence of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the world’s premier public health agency, an outcome long sought by conservatives critical of its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. The reorganization of the Department of Health and Human Services shrinks the C.D.C. by …

The Trump administration has abruptly laid off the entire staff running a $4.1 billion program to help low-income households across the United States pay their heating and cooling bills. The firings threaten to paralyze the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which was created by Congress in 1981 and helps to offset high utility bills for roughly 6.2 million people …

A few days ago, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, embarked on a media tour to defend his decision to lay off thousands of his department’s workers. He announced a plan last week to cut 10,000 jobs, in addition to the estimated 10,000 jobs cut through retirements and buyouts in the early weeks of the Trump administration. Mr. Kennedy …

Hundreds of federal health workers, including doctors in senior leadership positions, began hearing early Tuesday morning that they are losing their jobs, part of a vast restructuring that will winnow down the agencies charged with regulating food and drugs, protecting Americans from disease and researching new treatments and cures. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced last week that he …

Joe Grinsteiner is a gregarious online personality who touts the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin. In a recent Facebook video, he produced a tube of veterinary-grade ivermectin paste — the kind made for deworming horses. He gave the tube a squeeze. Then he licked a slug of the stuff, and gulped. “Yum,” Mr. Grinsteiner said in the Feb. 25 video, one of …

A steadfast figure in the anti-vaccine movement who has helped shape Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s thinking on a possible link to autism has joined his department to work on a study examining the long-debunked theory, according to people familiar with the matter. The new analyst, David Geier, has published numerous articles in the medical literature attempting to tie …

The Trump administration on Thursday announced a massive layoff of 10,000 employees at the Health and Human Services Department, as part of a dramatic reorganization designed to bring communications and other functions directly under the purview of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The layoffs, reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal, are a drastic reduction in personnel for the …