A few days ago, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. embarked on a media tour to defend his decision to fire thousands of workers in his department.
He announced plans to cut 10,000 jobs last week, along with the estimated 10,000 jobs that cut retirements and acquisitions early in the Trump administration.
During an interview with News Nation, Kennedy called the Health and Human Services Department “$1.9 trillion, twice the government's largest agency, the pentagon.” He went on to suggest that the department does little to improve the health of Americans.
HHS spends more than the Department of Defense, with its discretionary budget of around $850 billion. However, according to some budget experts, the overwhelming majority of the HHS department's $1.8 trillion budget is not spent on staff.
Three budget experts say spending on federal health agency officials accounts for just a small portion of the budget. These include Food and Drug Administration staff, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health.
The vast majority of money is spent through Medicare, healthcare for people over the age of 65, or through Medicaid for low-income people. These funds will be excluded from private insurance plans from hospitals, clinics, nursing homes, dialysis centers, pharmaceutical companies, medical device manufacturers and Medicare Advantage.
Melinda Bunting, a professor of health policy and economics at Johns Hopkins University, said the $17.6 billion cost of HHS employees accounts for less than 1% of the department's budget, rising along overall spending.
“I think most people will be surprised that a small share of health and human services spending is for HR, both wages and compensation and benefits,” she said.
Bobby Cogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for Progress in America, a left-leaning think tank, said Kennedy's framing was “incredibly misleading.”
“It's going to leave someone with a very misunderstanding of what's actually going on,” Kogan said. “The only story of what's going on with HHS is that the elderly population is growing significantly.”
A HHS spokesperson said the workforce cuts are intended to cut $1.8 billion a year in federal spending, and the amount is important.
Another institution within the HHS, the administration for children and families, is also spending billions of dollars on service to the public. It operates Head Start Program, Foster Care, temporary support for poor families, previously known as welfare, and nursing homes for unaccompanied minors in other countries.
Christounner, policy director for the Responsible Federal Budget Committee, made his own calculations and concluded that HHS staff expenses appear to be embarrassed by 1% of departmental spending. The numbers could be slightly higher given the number of workers at health institutions with advanced degrees, he said.
So far, the Trump administration has spoken about federal fraud repeatedly, but not the type that has long been a target for Congress. Lawmakers have repeatedly raised the idea that they will get caught up in Medicare Advantage insurance plans. It is estimated to overcharge Medicare by tens of millions of dollars a year.
