CMS makes work cuts as RKF Jr. Dut HHS
An antenna of the centers for Medicare & Medicaid services on March 19, 2025 in Woodlawn, Maryland.
Kayla Bartkowski | Getty pictures
The centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services have lowered jobs from the health office of minorities and other departments.
During a virtual all-hand meeting with the employees on Friday, the incumbent administrator of CMS, Stephanie Carlton, some of the specific offices of the agency, which was affected by reductions in the context of Kennedy’s broad plan to restructure the Ministry of Health and Human Services or HHs.
CNBC looked at a copy of the internal meeting, which was the first at CMS since HHS employees began to receive notifications about whether they had lost their work as part of the cuts.
Kennedy’s plan includes reducing 10,000 jobs at HHS, including only 300 in CMS, but far larger numbers for other agencies. CMS monitors the health insurance programs for 160 million Americans together with other important functions in the healthcare system -and the Trump administration has tried to establish the effects of its cuts on state expenditure on the popular Medicare program.
But Kennedy said on Thursday that some employees and programs in various federal authorities who are affected by its extensive reductions are restored “because we will make mistakes”.
Carlton on Friday did not state whether CMS employee will be hired again, but said: “We think this painful part of [the cuts] This affects the people who are interested in us is ready. ”
“I don’t want to make a promise that nothing will never happen, but these are definitely the one that I know,” she told the workers and referred to the agency’s cuts. However, she said that the layoffs were not easy, but emphasized that the CMS leadership had to reconcile the agency’s mission with efficiency throughout HHS.
She added that Dr. Mehmet Oz ‘paperwork later on Friday should be done on Friday, a day after it was confirmed by the Senate to operate CMS. OZ, a celebrity TV presenter and former candidate of the US Senate, would like to hold another all-hand call on Monday, said Carlton. OZ, once called “America’s Doctor”, is now more known for the dubious promotion of nutritional supplements and hormones that are not supported by scientific evidence.
The work cuts in HHS are in addition to around 10,000 employees who have decided to leave the department through voluntary separation offers, since President Donald Trump took office. Together they will lead to the Federal Ministry of Health rejecting about a quarter of its workforce and it shrinks to 62,000 employees.
Kennedy’s restructuring comes when the United States has dealt with one of the worst measles outbursts for more than two decades and spread out in wild birds worldwide and cause outbreaks in poultry and US milk cows with several recent cases. The US Food and Drug Administration enforces the efforts to improve its bird flu tests of milk, cheese and home care food, since the agency reported massive personnel cuts at the agency, Reuters reported on Thursday.
CMS did not immediately answer a request for comments.
The programs that were cut at CMS
She said that the Office for Minority Health was affected by the cuts. The segment works with local and federal partners to eliminate health differences and to improve health results for people from all minority population, according to the CMS website. It conducts research and analyzes to develop new solutions to reduce costs, to prevent diseases and to reduce incidence and serious chronic diseases in the USA
The office was approved by the Affordable Care Act more than a decade ago, so that the law may violate the law. It seems to belong among the victims of the ideological campaign of the Trump government against diversity, justice and inclusion or the initiatives.
CMS understands that it must continue to meet the responsibility of this office under legal law. Carlton noticed. She said CMS will appoint a new office for health director for minorities.
However, she did not expressly said whether the current director of the office, Dr. Martin Mendoza, had resigned or was affected by the cuts. Mendoza has not resigned from his role, an HHS employee told who asked anonymity to speak freely about the matter, to CNBC.
But “probably the largest group affected” was the office for program operations and the local commitment, said Carlton. This office is responsible for the implementation and monitoring of Medicare and Medicaid programs and with the stakeholders at the local level. Carlton said the cuts there tried to address areas in which there were several departments with a “similar mission”.
An office that was responsible for the administration of the agency was influenced, as was the Medicare-Medicaid coordination office, added Carlton. The latter serves people who are justified twice for Medicare and Medicaid and develop models to improve coordination of care for them.
Part of this work is picked up by others in CMS or outside the agency, said Carlton.
She noticed that CMS will keep internal teams dealing with communication, personnel and information technology. The agency’s IT team was not affected at all “because of the sensitivity of many of our data records,” said Carlton.
