Notes of a Bobby Watcher. Episode VI

Whoops! Read to the end for my opinion/prediction

Bobby VI

HHS announced its plan to down-size from 82,000 to 62,000 full-time employees.

Secretary Kennedy did this without a scientific analysis. No surprise.

By the way, I am the first to admit that there is fat in the NIH workforce. I’m sure it can be streamlined. I’ve seen such “fat” firsthand in my experience of fifty years in health care.

But it should not be done with a big broom sweeping a room with no light. It must be done with proper analysis.

Ready for this?

Per Dr. Jetelina, here is what has happened.

HIV prevention? Gone.

Asthma and air quality team? Gone.

Environmental hazard response? Gone.

Gun violence prevention? Gutted.

Communications? Gutted.

Worker safety? Gone.

Reproductive health? Gone.

Birth defects? Gone.

Disability health? Gone.

TB prevention? Gone.

Blood disorder programs? Gone.

National survey on drug use and mental health? Gone.

Lead poisoning prevention? Gone.

Water safety? Gone.

Tobacco control division? Gone.

And that’s just CDC.

Critics argue the massive reductions will hamstring the critical work of preventing disease outbreaks and approving medicines.

Recently, RFK Jr. said, “Whoops! We Fired the Wrong People at HHS.”

Whoops? Whoops? Are you kidding?

Now Kennedy Jr. is backtracking on his sweeping federal layoffs, admitting that he would be reinstating some programs and positions that had been mistakenly cut.

Whoops? Mistakenly cut? That means, Secretary, that you did not do a study, kinda like your shoot-from-the-hip philosophy.

Why Secretary, in 2005, you authored an article co-published by Rolling Stone and Salon in which you misrepresented the transcript of a meeting of doctors to support your thesis that they were conspiring with the pharmaceutical industry to push unsafe vaccines. (The article was later retracted by Salon and removed from both publications’ Web sites.)

Whoops! You were mistaken.

But in the process of “Make America Healthy Again,” you admitted that a few too many cuts were made along the way, though you say that “was always the plan.”

“We’re streamlining the agencies. We’re going to make it work for public health, make it work for the American people. In the course of that, there were several instances where studies that should not have been cut were cut, and we’ve reinstated them.”

Where studies “should have been done.”

“Whoops. We fired the wrong people . . . Personnel that should not have been cut were cut–we’re reinstating them, and that was always the plan.”

He added that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had mistakenly cut some programs and jobs that were not meant to be eliminated, particularly human resources jobs.

Whoops. Mistakenly? With no study thereof?

But once again, Secretary Kennedy, you said it was always part of the “plan” to go back in and fix DOGE’s mistakes. ( My comment. Don’t you folks talk to each other? You have America’s health in your hands)

Now, Kennedy says he will reinstate various programs across HHS, including a program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that monitors blood lead levels for children. Well, I’m guessing that was an easy decision.

It’s good that new leadership comes with innovative ideas. But the idea of decision-making without bona fide evidence is horrible.

My Opinion:

· Secretary Kennedy has no idea what he is doing

· Secretary Kennedy does not understand the mission of Health and Human Services . . .to enhance the health and well-being of all Americans by providing effective health and human services and fostering advances in the sciences underlying medicine, public health, and social services.

· Downsizing the HHS workforce will have a devastating impact on the fight against cancer and other diseases and will set science back.

· And lastly, I predict Secretary Kennedy will be fired soon

Whoops!