Federal health workers make up less than 1% of agencies

A few days ago, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Health Secretary, began a media tour to defend his decision to dismiss thousands of workers in his department.

It announced a plan last week to reduce 10,000 jobs, in addition to the estimated 10,000 retirement and acquisition retirement jobs in the first few weeks of Trump administration.

Mr Kennedy had called on the Department of Health and Human Services “The largest organization in the government, twice the size of the Pentagon, $ 1.9 trillion”, during an interview with Newsnation. He continued to indicate that the department did not do little to improve the health of Americans, “with all the money she was thrown into, with all the staff introduced”.

The HHS spends more than the Ministry of Defense, which has a distinctive budget of about $ 850 billion. However, according to several budget experts, the overwhelming majority of the 1.8 trillion budget of the HHS department is not spent on their staff.

Expenditure on Federal Health Services staff represent a small fraction of their budget – less than 1 %, according to three budget experts. This includes the staff of the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and more.

The overwhelming majority of money is spent through Medicare, on the health care of people over 65 or through Medicaid, for people with low incomes. These funds are filtered in hospitals, clinics, nursing homes, dialysis centers, pharmaceutical companies, medical manufacturers and private insurance plans Medicare Advantage.

Melinda Buntin, a professor of health and economy at Johns Hopkins University, said the costs of $ 17.6 billion for HHS employees were less than 1 % of the department’s budget and increased according to total costs.

“I think most people will be amazed at what is a small share of health and human services for staff, both salaries and compensation and benefits,” he said, noting that it was meaningful at the expense of the organization for care.

Bobby Kogan, senior director of the federal budget policy at the American Progress Center, a left -wing think tank, said that Mr Kennedy’s framework was “incredibly misleading”.

“He would leave someone with a super wrong understanding of what is really going on,” Mr Kogan said. “The only story of what’s going on in HHS is that we have a huge increase in the elderly population.”

An HHS spokesman said labor reductions are intended to reduce $ 1.8 billion per year in federal spending and that the amount is significant.

Children and families, another HHS service, also spends billions of dollars on public services. Head start programs, foster care, temporary help for families needed, known as prosperity and care for unaccompanied minors from other countries.

Chris Towner, director of a committee for a responsible federal budget, made his own calculation, also concluding that the cost of HHS staff seems to be shy of 1 % of the department’s costs. The number could be slightly higher, he said, given the number of advanced health workers.

So far, Trump’s administration has repeatedly talked about fraud in the federal government – though not the type that has long been targeted in Congress. Legislators have repeatedly set the idea of ​​unfolding Medicare Advantage Insurance Plans, which are estimated to exceed Medicare with tens of billions of dollars a year.