(Boisse and Washington) The general prosecutors of 19 American states and Washington DC dispute budget cuts in the department of Health and social services (HHS), saying that the massive restructuring of the Trump administration has destroyed vital programs and lets the states pay the bill for increasing health crises.
Posted at 2:59 p.m.
Rebecca Boone and Amanda Seitz Associated Press
The complaint was filed on Monday before the Washington DC Federal Court, said New York State General Prosecutor Letitia James. The attorneys general of Arizona, Calorado, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Michigan, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin and District Columbia signed the complaint.
The Secretary of Health, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., restructured the department in March, removing more than 10,000 employees and reducing the number of HHS agencies, said the general prosecutors. Some 10,000 additional employees had already been dismissed by the administration of President Donald Trump, according to the complaint, and these budget cuts reduced the workforce by 25 %.
Prosecutors general wrote that “in the first three months, secretary Kennedy and his administration deprived the HHS of the resources necessary for his work”.
Mr. Kennedy said he wanted to rationalize the country’s public health agencies and reduce duplicates thanks to these layoffs. These budget cuts were operated as part of a directive that the administration called “Make America Healthy Again” (Maha, in French “to make America sound again”).
PHOTO ELIZABETH FRANTZ, ARCHIVES REUTERS
The Secretary of Health, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
HHS is one of the most expensive federal departments in the government, with an annual budget of around 1,700 billion US, mainly devoted to the health coverage of millions of people registered in Medicare and Medicaid.
The budget cuts have had the consequence that laboratories carry out limited tests for certain infectious diseases, that the federal government does not follow the risk of cancer in American firefighters, that early childhood learning programs are uncertain about their future funding and that maternal cancer and health monitoring programs have been closed, say the prosecutors.
Budget cuts to disease control and prevention centers (CDC) have also hampered the ability of states to respond to one of the largest measles epidemics in recent years, according to the complaint.
“This chaos and this abandonment of the essential functions of the department are not an involuntary side effect, but rather the expected result” of the “Maha directive”, they argued. They ask a judge to cancel the directive, claiming that the administration cannot unilaterally delete the programs and funding created by the Congress.
Restructuring has eliminated the entire team responsible for managing federal poverty directives, used by states to determine the eligibility of Medicaid residents, nutrition and other programs. A smoking prevention agency has been dismantled. Personnel losses have also been important in the administration of drug addiction and mental health services.
The Trump administration is already faced with other judicial disputes concerning budget cuts in public health agencies and research organizations. A coalition of 23 states brought federal legal action in the Rhode Island last month after the government’s decision to reduce federal funds by COVVI-19 and various public health projects across the country by 11 billion.
