MAHA Comes to Washington

March 31st, 2025

Daniel Song

Since becoming the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS,) Robert F. Kennedy Jr, has made major changes to the agency, mainly focusing on two areas: downsizing operations and changing agency guidance on vaccines and food safety.

The first part of Kennedy’s reforms are efforts to shrink the staff of HHS from 82,000 to 62,000, 10,000 jobs through layoffs and another 10,000 workers who took early retirement and voluntary separation offers. These cuts include 3,500 jobs at the Food and Drug Administration overseeing inspects and safety standards for drugs, medical devices and foods, 2,400 jobs at the Centers for Disease Control, which monitors disease outbreaks, 1,200 jobs at the National Institute for Health, one of the US’s main medical research facilities, and 300 jobs at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which manages the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare,) Medicare and Medicaid. Overall, these changes will save $1.8 billion a year. One potential issue with staffing cuts is that this will worsen customer service and response times for government programs. For example, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will have a harder time troubleshooting Americans’ bureaucratic hurdles and problems when using government health programs as fewer staff have to manage the same workload.

Several agencies could also be eliminated altogether, including the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, called SAMHSA, which uses a $7.2 billion budget to operate the 988 National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, regulates clinics that dispense opioid treatment drugs such as methadone, and helps funds organizations that provide opioid addiction prevention, treatment and social services. However, SAMHSA was created by Congress in 1992, so closing it without congressional authorization is illegal. Additionally, the loss of staff and funding may jeopardize efforts to combat the opioid abuse epidemic, which killed 87,000 Americans last year.

The second part of Kennedy’s reforms are part of his Make America Healthy Again, also known as MAHA. A long time advocate for alternative medicine, Kennedy has prompted controversial policies regarding vaccines and public health. For example, Kennedy recently hired a discredited anti-vaccine analyst to study the links between vaccines and autism. However, this contradicts the CDC’s own guidance that vaccines are overwhelmingly safe as well as many outside studies debunking any link between vaccines and autism. Additionally, Kennedy has advocated allowing the bird flu to spread unchecked to promote immunity, but several experts have expressed concerns. Dr. Gail Hansen, a former state veterinarian for Kansas, explains that allowing the bird blue to spread unchecked through 5 million birds would give it 5 million chances to mutate, making it much more dangerous. This would increase economic losses and potentially cause farm workers and other animals at risk of infection.

Kennedy has also taken aim at food safety in America, focusing on ending SNAP (a federal program for low-income Americans to afford food) eligibility for sugary soda in a bid to improve public health and combat obesity. However, a recent study in the American Journal of Public Health has argued that restricting SNAP funding to not cover certain food purchases would not improve public health, but instead be counterproductive by reducing purchasing power and stigmatizing SNAP users. Kennedy has also pressured food companies to reduce sugar in infant formula, remove chemical dyes in foods, and stop using seed oils for frying food. Several companies are already responding, with fast food chain Steak ’n Shake saying it will use beef tallow instead of seed oils.