Healthcare

HHS Lost 20,000 Workers Across Every Major Health Agency

In March 2025, Kennedy ordered 10,000 layoffs across HHS on top of 10,000 employees who had already left through early retirements, buyouts, and voluntary departures. The cuts hit every major health agency:

The FY 2026 budget request sought to make the cuts permanent. Kennedy proposed cutting HHS discretionary spending by 25 percent, a $32 billion reduction. The NIH alone would lose $18 billion, dropping its budget to $27.5 billion, the lowest level in over a decade when adjusted for inflation. The CDC would lose $3.5 billion. The FDA would lose $409 million. Cuts on that scale would mean fewer food inspectors, slower drug approvals, and research grants that end mid-study.

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Kennedy’s Removal of CDC Vaccine Advisers and the Court Ruling

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is the panel that decides which vaccines the CDC recommends for children and adults. It is the reason your pediatrician knows which shots your kid needs and when. For decades, ACIP has been staffed by immunologists and infectious-disease specialists selected for their expertise. In June 2025, Kennedy removed all 17 independent scientific experts from ACIP in a single day. He announced the decision in an opinion article in the Wall Street Journal. He replaced them with new appointees of his own choosing, including Robert Malone and Martin Kulldorff, both of whom had publicly questioned vaccine safety and downplayed COVID-19. The court later found that 15 Kennedy appointees had been placed on the committee, only 6 with meaningful vaccine expertise. The new panel got to work. It voted to abandon universal hepatitis B vaccination for newborns and restricted a combination shot that protects against chickenpox, measles, mumps, and rubella. It also declined to universally recommend COVID-19 vaccines. Separately, in January 2026, the CDC unilaterally reduced the number of routinely recommended childhood vaccinations from 17 to 11, cutting guidance on rotavirus, influenza, and hepatitis A without consulting ACIP at all. On March 16, 2026, U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy ruled all of it illegal. The court found that only 6 of Kennedy’s 15 ACIP appointees had any meaningful vaccine expertise, despite the panel’s charter requiring it. The judge blocked all 13 Kennedy appointees and invalidated the votes the reconstituted panel had taken. He also found the CDC had exceeded its authority in cutting the vaccine schedule without ACIP review.

The administration said it would appeal. As of May 2026, the appeal was pending and the original ACIP recommendations were in legal limbo. Tell Congress that RFK Jr. cannot be trusted with public health.

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Vaccine Studies Withdrawn or Held Back at FDA and CDC

If you cannot fire the scientists fast enough, you can bury their findings. In October 2025, two FDA studies on COVID-19 vaccines that had been accepted by peer-reviewed medical journals were withdrawn before publication. The studies found no safety concerns. The agency also blocked two safety studies on the shingles vaccine Shingrix from being presented at a drug safety conference. HHS said the studies were pulled due to “concerns about their conclusions.” The pattern continued at the CDC. In March 2026, Jay Bhattacharya, the most senior political appointee at the CDC, suppressed a study showing that COVID-19 vaccines cut hospitalizations by roughly half during the 2025-2026 winter season. The study had been scheduled for publication in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. It found vaccines reduced emergency department visits, urgent care visits, and hospitalizations among healthy adults by approximately 50 percent. The study was pulled from the publication schedule. No explanation was offered to the scientists who conducted it. Federal researchers collect data, analyze it, and publish it so doctors and patients can make informed decisions. When political appointees decide which results see the light of day, doctors cannot recommend treatments they do not know about and parents cannot make informed choices.

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Measles Outbreaks and the U.S. Elimination Status Review

In the first three months of 2026, the United States logged roughly 1,600 measles cases, nearly as many as the total for all of 2025, which was already the worst year for measles in decades. The outbreaks are concentrated in communities with declining vaccination rates. The Pan American Health Organization had set an April 13, 2026 meeting to review the nation’s measles elimination status. In March, the review was pushed back seven months, to November. An HHS spokesperson said the department needed more time to review data, and Kennedy denied that HHS was involved in the decision. Kennedy’s new CDC deputy, Ralph Abraham, publicly downplayed the significance of losing elimination status. At a Senate hearing in April 2026, Kennedy denied responsibility for the outbreaks. The timeline tells a different story. A secretary who spent his career questioning vaccines leads an agency that cut its vaccine recommendations by a third and suppressed research showing vaccines work. The measles virus did not change. The response to it did.

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Preventive Services Task Force Firings and Free Screenings

On May 11, 2026, Kennedy fired the two vice chairs of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, the independent panel that determines which preventive services Americans can receive at no cost under the Affordable Care Act. John Wong and Esa Davis received letters telling them their removal was effective immediately. This is the panel that recommends mammograms, colonoscopies, depression screenings, and dozens of other services that insurance must cover without a copay. Kennedy then sought nominations for new members, with replacements expected to start in July 2026. The vaccine panel went through the same steps in 2025: Kennedy removed every member, named his own appointees, and the new panel changed long-standing recommendations until a federal judge ruled the changes illegal. If Kennedy reshapes the USPSTF, the consequences go beyond vaccines. They reach into every doctor’s office, every screening appointment, every preventive service that catches cancer early or identifies depression before it becomes a crisis.

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The $911 Billion Medicaid Cut and the 2027 Work Requirements

While Kennedy dismantles the agencies, Congress is cutting the safety net. The reconciliation bill signed into law on July 4, 2025, included $911 billion in cuts to Medicaid over the next decade. The first cut people will feel is a work requirement. Adults covered through the expansion must document 80 hours a month of work, school, or volunteering starting January 1, 2027. Nebraska started early on May 1, 2026, Montana followed on July 1, and Iowa starts December 1. Nebraska’s first cutoffs landed on July 31, 2026. The law left the 90% federal match for expansion adults untouched, which keeps a set of state trigger laws dormant for now. Nine states would end expansion automatically if that match ever falls, so any future cut to it would cost coverage in those states with no vote. South Dakota voters will decide in November 2026 whether to add the same trigger to their constitution.

Expansion enrollees in the automatic-trigger states, if the match falls:

The Congressional Budget Office projects these Medicaid changes will increase the number of uninsured Americans by 10 million over the decade. That is 10 million people who will delay care and skip prescriptions until they end up in emergency rooms, which costs everyone more in the long run. Our Medicaid explainer has a letter you can send to Congress about the cuts.

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What You Can Do About Coverage, Screenings and Vaccines

1. Check your state’s Medicaid rules. If you are covered through the expansion, work requirements start January 1, 2027, or sooner in Nebraska, Montana, and Iowa. Answer every notice from your state Medicaid office, and ask your state legislators how they will keep eligible people from losing coverage by mistake. The KFF Medicaid tracker has state-by-state data.
2. Talk to your doctor. Ask whether any recommended screenings or vaccinations have changed for you or your family. If your provider has not heard about the ACIP changes or the USPSTF firings, tell them. Doctors are getting less guidance from federal agencies, not more. Patients who ask questions help fill the gap.
3. Stay vaccinated. The court ruling restored the original ACIP recommendations for now, and the science behind them has not changed: measles, hepatitis B, rotavirus, and influenza remain dangerous, and vaccines prevent them. If you or your children are behind on any vaccinations, schedule an appointment.