A leaked Health and Human Services draft budget slashes the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) funding nearly in half, axes public health programs, and funnels billions into a new agency under RFK, Jr.
A 64-page internal document of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) obtained and reported on by the Washington Post, is a proposed budget outlining a $40 billion cut to discretionary spending that the Trump administration intends to send to Congress for approval. The proposal slashes NIH spending from $47 billion to $27 billion (a cut of roughly 40%), and reduces the CDC budget from $9.2 billion to $5.2 billion (more than 40%). But it will spend $20 billion to make a new agency, the Administration for a Healthy America (AHA). HHS has already lost about 25% of its workforce in the first few weeks of Trump’s return to Washington.
The draft budget, known as a “passback”—as was the recent budget proposal that would halve NASA’s science spending—also details extensive plans to restructure HHS and reveals the President’s priorities on health issues.
Many of the cuts are directed at preventive programs, which critics say will end up costing more in the long run. Anand Parekh, chief medical advisor at the Bipartisan Policy Center, told the Post, “You can expect the costs of the Medicare and Medicaid program just to go up. That’s the shortsightedness of reducing the sliver of the budget that is discretionary when that is the main opportunity you have to reduce [the] health burden in America and get ahead of health problems.”
