Latest news with #HealthNextSummit
Yahoo
28-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
RFK Jr. defends HHS job cuts: ‘We're not cutting front-line workers'
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. defended the administration's decision to cut 10,000 jobs at the department on Thursday, confirming that essential employees would remain part of the staff. 'We're not cutting front line workers, we're cutting administrators, and we're consolidating the agency to make it more efficient,' Kennedy said during a Thursday evening appearance on NewsNation's 'CUOMO.' In addition to the new cuts, HHS is looking to remove an additional 10,000 through severance packages, buyouts and early retirements. Kennedy, in a video shared to social platform X, acknowledged 'this will be a painful period for HHS.' The move would cut a fourth of the department's workforce, resembling similar reduction in forces at the Department of Education, Department of Veteran Affairs and other agencies in line with President Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency's (DOGE) efforts to cut down on 'wasteful' spending and overhaul the workforce. 'We have over 100 comms departments. You have 40 procurement departments. We have dozens of IT departments, dozens of HR departments, none of them talk to each other,' Kennedy told host Chris Cuomo. 'And what we're trying to do now is to streamline the agency, to eliminate the redundancies and to focus the mission so that everybody who is at HHS is going to wake up every morning and say, 'What am I going to do today to Make America Healthy Again,' and we're going to make it easier for those who are not cutting scientists,' he added. Some have objected to Kennedy's leadership of the department, citing the former independent presidential candidates' lack of previous experience in the medical field and anti-vaccine rhetoric. Former HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said she is concerned about the job cuts and their effect on public health amid funding deductions for research grants through the National Institutes of Health (NIH). 'I'm worried on a lot of fronts,' Sebelius said during The Hill's 'Health Next Summit.' 'The kinds of cuts that were just announced are devastating and will set science back and set research back,' she added. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Hill
28-03-2025
- Health
- The Hill
RFK Jr. defends HHS job cuts: ‘We're not cutting front-line workers'
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. defended the administration's decision to cut 10,000 jobs at the department on Thursday, confirming that essential employees would remain part of the staff. 'We're not cutting front line workers, we're cutting administrators, and we're consolidating the agency to make it more efficient,' Kennedy said during a Thursday evening appearance on NewsNation's 'CUOMO.' In addition to the new cuts, HHS is looking to remove an additional 10,000 through severance packages, buyouts and early retirements. Kennedy, in a video shared to social platform X, acknowledged 'this will be a painful period for HHS.' The move would cut a fourth of the department's workforce, resembling similar reduction in forces at the Department of Education, Department of Veteran Affairs and other agencies in line with President Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency's (DOGE) efforts to cut down on 'wasteful' spending and overhaul the workforce. 'We have over 100 comms departments. You have 40 procurement departments. We have dozens of IT departments, dozens of HR departments, none of them talk to each other,' Kennedy told host Chris Cuomo. 'And what we're trying to do now is to streamline the agency, to eliminate the redundancies and to focus the mission so that everybody who is at HHS is going to wake up every morning and say, 'What am I going to do today to Make America Healthy Again,' and we're going to make it easier for those who are not cutting scientists,' he added. Some have objected to Kennedy's leadership of the department, citing the former independent presidential candidates' lack of previous experience in the medical field and anti-vaccine rhetoric. Former HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said she is concerned about the job cuts and their effect on public health amid funding deductions for research grants through the National Institutes of Health (NIH). 'I'm worried on a lot of fronts,' Sebelius said during The Hill's 'Health Next Summit.' 'The kinds of cuts that were just announced are devastating and will set science back and set research back,' she added.
Yahoo
27-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Former HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius worries over ‘devastating' cuts to research funding
Former Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is concerned about the Trump administration's recent cuts to research grants through the National Institutes of Health (NIH). 'I'm worried on a lot of fronts,' Sebelius said during The Hill's 'Health Next Summit.' 'The kinds of cuts that were just announced are devastating and will set science back and set research back.' The Trump administration and billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency have eliminated whole agencies and made sweeping cuts to others over the past two months, including to NIH. Recently, the Trump administration announced it would cancel all NIH grants on equity issues, which include work studying HIV and black maternal health. The administration also recently issued a 15 percent cap on indirect costs of NIH grants. Indirect funding in NIH grants is used to cover overhead and administrative costs at universities and other research institutions. A federal judge recently ordered the NIH to stop its plans to cut its grant funding amount to universities, hospitals and other institutions following a number of lawsuits from state Democratic attorneys general and the Association of American Medical Colleges. Still, many in the scientific community are concerned. Academics, health care workers and scientists have all opposed the cuts, arguing that they will harm Americans in many ways including by pausing lifesaving and life-sustaining research on diseases like cancer. Sebelius said that in her home state of Kansas, both Kansas State University and the University of Kansas have started losing millions of dollars 'on the health side' and in research. 'That has a decades-long impact,' she said. Sebelius said the cuts also threaten to erase the U.S.'s standing as the leader and gold standard of research. She noted that China is 'eager' to take the U.S.'s place as the world's leader of scientific research if given the opportunity. 'They will gladly step into any vacuum we create,' she said. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Hill
27-03-2025
- Health
- The Hill
Former HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius worries over ‘devastating' cuts to research funding
Former Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is concerned about the Trump administration's recent cuts to research grants through the National Institutes of Health (NIH). 'I'm worried on a lot of fronts,' Sebelius said during The Hill's Health Next Summit. 'The kinds of cuts that were just announced are devastating and will set science back and set research back.' The Trump administration and their billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency have eliminated whole agencies and made sweeping cuts to others over the past two months, including to NIH. Recently, the Trump administration announced it would cancel all NIH grants on equity issues, which includes work studying HIV and black maternal health. The administration also recently issued a 15 percent cap on indirect cost cap on NIH grants. Indirect funding in NIH grants is used to cover overhead and administrative costs at universities and other research institutions. A federal judge recently ordered the NIH to stop its plans to cut its grant funding amount to universities, hospitals and other institutions following a number of lawsuits from state Democratic attorneys general and the Association of American Medical Colleges. Still, many in the scientific community are concerned. Academics, health care workers and scientists have all opposed the cuts, arguing that they will harm Americans in many ways including by pausing lifesaving and life-sustaining research on diseases like cancer. Sebelius said that in her home state of Kansas, both Kansas State University and the University of Kansas have started losing millions of dollars 'on the health side' and in research. 'That has a decades-long impact,' she said. Sebelius said the cuts also threaten to erase the U.S.'s standing as the leader and gold standard of research. She noted that China is 'eager' to take the U.S.'s place as the world's leader of scientific research if given the opportunity. 'They will gladly step into any vacuum we create,' she said.
The Hill
26-03-2025
- Business
- The Hill
Mark Cuban wants to revolutionize US health care
Businessman Mark Cuban is making it his 'mission' to shake up U.S. health care. Cuban is known for owning the Dallas Mavericks and for his role as an angel investor on the ABC reality TV show 'SharkTank.' He hasn't shied away from the political arena as a prominent critic of President Trump. But Cuban says he has no interest in running for higher office, opting instead to disrupt health care. 'If I could change health care in this country, that would be amazing,' Cuban said in an interview for The Hill's 'Health Next Summit.' For Cuban, that starts with his company Cost Plus Drugs, which launched in 2022 with the goal of pharmacies leapfrogging middleman wholesalers. 'I'm not saying I'm going to be able to pull it off, but I know we've had a significant impact with and I think getting there and focusing on that and just changing people's lives for the better on the health care side, that's my mission,' he said. Cuban says the company carries over 2,500 medications, and that when customers type in the name of a medication they immediately see its actual cost followed by the mark-up, which is always 15 percent. The businessman said the company's transparency is what sets it apart from its competitors, which include Amazon Prime, Costco and GoodRX. 'As crazy as it sounds, we are the only company that publishes their entire price list,' he said. However, Cuban said Cost Plus Drugs has run into the roadblock of pharmacy benefit managers, also known as PBMs. Those are the middlemen that manage drug coverage for businesses across the U.S. PBMs and brand drug manufacturers negotiate discounts in the form of rebates, and the PBM then passes most of the rebates on to employers. Critics argue PBMs do not always find the best deals and are forcing independent drug stores out of business by not paying them enough to cover their costs. The PBM industry, on the other hand, said PBMs save employers and patients billions on drug costs. 'When we talk to manufacturers and we say, look, why can't we get in the same rebate programs as these big PBMs, they tell us without telling us that they don't want to lose their position on the formulary, which is hundreds of millions or billions of dollars in sales,' Cuban said. 'The big PBMs just won't let them deal with us. That is our problem. Period. End of story,' he added. But Cuban said he and his team are slowly making progress through going to drug manufacturer CEOs and working with pass-through PBMs, which eliminate discounts, rebates and fees directly to the payer. 'All of the rebates are passed through so you actually get significant savings, and slowly but surely we're having inroads,' he said. Cuban is also touting the company's partnership with independent pharmacies through paying them a $12 fill fee per prescription, fully reimbursing the pharmacy and allowing them to make a profit. 'I want independent pharmacies to stay in business,' Cuban said. 'I think as a country, we don't want to see pharmacy deserts. We need them to stay in business. All those people, senior citizens that have been going to the same pharmacist for decades and that pharmacist knows them, they know their family, that's important. That saves lives.' 'The problem is that the biggest PBMs won't fully reimburse,' he said. Cuban argued that Cost Plus Drugs would be able to dramatically cut the cost of brand medication if the pharmaceutical industry allows the company to participate in rebate programs. 'The amount of money that we can save taxpayers and patients will be, to paraphrase, like you've never seen before. Most in history ever,' he said, appearing to mimic Trump. Cuban says he is hopeful the Trump administration will work to lower prices through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and Health and Human Services Department (HHS). However, he added that he believes Republicans have been afraid to work with him, particularly from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Cuban described the approach of the Trump administration and DOGE head Elon Musk as 'ready, aim, fire,' which he added 'is no way to govern. 'Particularly when the you know what, you know, rolls downhill onto the small-to-medium-sized communities and cities where all of a sudden, who knows how many people are losing jobs, who knows how many companies have to close, because their grants have been cut, and who knows the impact on that community in terms of services they're going to be able to offer, raising taxes,' he said. The businessman is one of the most outspoken critics of Trump from the business community, and opted to campaign with then-Vice President Harris last year. Cuban said he does not particularly care about the future of the Democratic Party because of his status as an Independent. However, he encouraged Democrats to go into communities to get a sense of Trump's tariffs and DOGE cuts are playing out locally. 'You're not going to get people to all of the sudden turn on Donald Trump, but what you can do, as we've seen with some of the town halls, is get people to turn on some of the Republican House members who are going to have to make a really tough choice,' he said. 'If their communities are being negatively impacted by the all at once cuts of DOGE and the impact of the tariffs, well put the pressure on those House Republicans to make a choice. Either you support Donald Trump or you go against Donald Trump and say these tariffs and these cuts are awful for my town or you lose your job,' he said. 'What the Democrats should be doing rather than yelling at Donald Trump 'I would go to the local communities
