By Zachary Stieber, Senior Reporter (Epoch Times)

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on March 27 announced major changes at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), including the merging of some divisions, in a bid to become more efficient.

“We are going to streamline HHS to make our agency more efficient and more effective,” Kennedy said in a video statement.

The other goal is improving the quality of service.

Kennedy said that in addition to consolidating divisions, mass layoffs will reduce the full-time HHS workforce by about 25 percent from 82,000 workers.

Kennedy said the transition will be painful but that the department is “going to do more with less.”

The reorganization, which will take 28 divisions down to 15, is expected to save $1.8 billion a year, health officials said.

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The division that will be most affected is the Food and Drug Administration, with about 3,500 workers being fired, according to HHS. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s workforce will be reduced by about 2,400 employees. Some 1,200 employees at the National Institutes of Health will no longer have jobs. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, another division, will move forward with about 300 fewer workers.

HHS said in a statement that many of the divisions contain “redundant units.” Officials are going to consolidate the units into 15 divisions. One new division will be called the Administration for a Healthy America and feature five former divisions, including the Health Resources and Services Administration.

The reorganization, spurred by President Donald Trump’s order to agencies to initiate mass terminations, will not affect key services, such as Medicare and Medicaid, HHS stated.Some criticized the announcement.

Rep. Gerald Connolly (D-Va.), the top Democrat on the U.S. House of Representatives Oversight Committee, said in a statement on social media platform X that the cuts are “a grave mistake.”

“I have serious concerns about how this will impact Americans’ well-being now and long into the future,” he wrote.

Others expressed cautious optimism.

“I am interested in HHS working better, such as lifesaving drug approval more rapidly, and Medicare service improved,” Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) wrote on X. “I look forward to hearing how this reorganization furthers these goals.”

HHS already fired about 3,200 probationary workers, or newer employees, according to court filings. HHS was among the agencies that were recently ordered to reinstate those workers.

Other workers accepted the Trump administration’s buyout offer, which let workers go on paid leave until September or take early retirement, HHS said on Thursday.

About 10,000 additional employees will be terminated, according to the department. Once complete, the restructuring will leave HHS with a workforce of about 62,000.

The HHS budget increased by about 38 percent from 2021 to 2025, Kennedy said, while staffing went up by 17 percent during that time.

“But all that money has failed to improve the health of Americans,” he said.

He cited the growth in the rate of chronic disease and cancer, as well as a lower life expectancy for Americans when compared to Europeans.

Kennedy said that he’s found HHS is “mainly operating in silos,” with some divisions working “at cross-purposes with each other.”

“A few isolated divisions are neglecting public health altogether and seem only accountable to the industries that they’re supposed to be regulating,” Kennedy also said, without naming the divisions.

He also said that in one instance, “defiant bureaucrats impeded the secretary’s office from accessing the closely guarded databases that might reveal the dangers of certain drugs and medical interventions.”

HHS did not respond to a request for more information.