AP Reports of $25K Buyouts to HHS Employees

FIERCE HEALTHCARE - Health and Human Services (HHS) Department employees, which totals about 80,000, were offered voluntary buyouts to resign from their jobs Friday night, multiple media outlets reported.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Most of the 80,000 federal workers responsible for researching diseases, inspecting food and administering Medicare and Medicaid under the auspices of the Health and Human Services Department were emailed an offer to leave their job for as much as a $25,000 payment as part of President Donald Trump’s government cuts.

The mass email went out to a “broad population of HHS employees,” landing in their inboxes days before agency heads are to offer plans for shrinking their workforce. HHS is one of the government’s costliest federal agencies, with an annual budget of about $1.7 trillion that is mostly spent on health care coverage for millions of people enrolled in Medicare and Medicaid.

Workers cannot start opting in until Monday and have until 5 p.m. on Friday to submit a response for the so-called voluntary separation offer. The email was sent to staff across the department, which includes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, and the National Institutes of Health as well as the Food and Drug Administration, both in Maryland.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s health secretary, has hinted at plans at deep cuts to the staff. Last year, he promised to immediately clear out 600 employees at the NIH, the nation’s biomedical research arm. He has not gone that far, but in an interview last month shortly after being sworn in last month, Kennedy said he wanted to remove some workers from the public health agencies.

Kris Gates, [email protected]