Liz Essley Whyte
Appearances
WSJ What’s News
How RFK Jr. Is Reshaping the U.S. Health Agencies
This is in keeping with a lot of criticism that Kennedy has leveled against HHS even before becoming secretary. One of his tweets last fall told FDA workers to pack your bags. And now they're facing some of the biggest cuts in this big reorganization. Also is very focused on fighting chronic disease.
WSJ What’s News
How RFK Jr. Is Reshaping the U.S. Health Agencies
And part of what he's doing is combining several offices into a new administration for a healthy America that he says will help fight chronic disease and make Americans healthier overall. One of the really key parts of this is that Kennedy would like to centralize the agency's comms, I.T., procurement, H.R., policy planning. Kennedy is saying that makes HHS really inefficient.
WSJ What’s News
How RFK Jr. Is Reshaping the U.S. Health Agencies
And it seems like FDA and CDC are going to bear a big portion of these cuts. FDA is poised to lose nearly 20 percent of its workforce under the proposed cuts and CDC a similar percentage. That was WSJ Health reporter Liz Esley-White. Thank you, Liz. Thank you so much.
WSJ What’s News
How RFK Jr. Is Reshaping the U.S. Health Agencies
It'll be workers from across the Department of Health and Human Services, including thousands from the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And we're not quite sure how this will play out. Kennedy has said this will not affect essential health services, but definitely people involved in the work there are worried.
WSJ What’s News
How RFK Jr. Is Reshaping the U.S. Health Agencies
Democrats and the union are coming out and saying this will definitely affect health services just because it will slow down the people who do drug approvals and who respond to outbreaks because they'll have less tech support or less external communication support. What does this tell us about Kennedy's broader goal for HHS?