An aerial of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services building on March 19, 2025 in Woodlawn, Maryland.
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The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has slashed jobs from its minority health office and other divisions, CNBC has learned, as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. upends the U.S. health department.
During a virtual all-hands meeting with employees on Friday, CMS acting Administrator Stephanie Carlton detailed some of the specific offices at the agency impacted by cuts under Kennedy’s broader plan to restructure the Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS.
CNBC viewed a transcript of the internal meeting, which was the first at CMS since HHS employees began to receive notifications Tuesday about whether they had lost their jobs as part of the cuts.
Kennedy’s plan involves slashing 10,000 jobs at HHS, including just 300 at CMS but far greater numbers at other agencies. CMS oversees health insurance programs for 160 million Americans, along with other vital healthcare functions — and the Trump administration has tried to downplay the effects its cuts to government spending will have on the popular Medicare program.
But Kennedy said Thursday that some personnel and programs at different federal agencies affected by his sweeping reductions will be reinstated “because we’ll make mistakes.”
Carlton on Friday did not indicate whether any CMS employees will get reinstated, but said “we do think that painful part of [the cuts] that affects people we care about is finished.”
“I don’t want to make promises that nothing will ever happen, but these are definitely the ones I’m aware of,” she told workers, referring to the cuts at the agency. She said the layoffs were not easy, but emphasized that CMS leadership had to balance the agency’s mission with achieving efficiency across HHS.
She added that Dr. Mehmet Oz’s paperwork should be completed later on Friday, a day after he was confirmed by the Senate to run CMS. Oz, a celebrity TV host and former U.S. Senate candidate, would like to hold another all-hands call on Monday, Carlton said. Once called “America’s Doctor,” Oz is now more known for dubious promotion of supplements and hormones unsupported by scientific evidence.
The job cuts across HHS are in addition to about 10,000 employees who opted to leave the department since President Donald Trump took office, through voluntary separation offers. Combined, they will lead to the federal health department shedding about a quarter of its workforce, shrinking it to 62,000 employees.
Kennedy’s restructuring comes as the U.S. grapples with one of the worst measles outbreaks in more than two decades, and as bird flu spreads in wild birds worldwide and is causing outbreaks in poultry and U.S. dairy cows, with several recent human cases. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is suspending efforts to improve its bird flu testing of milk, cheese and pet food due to massive staff cuts at the agency, Reuters reported on…
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