Employees of the US Department of Health and Human Services were last week offered $25,000 in compensation to voluntarily leave their jobs. The initiative is part of the Trump administration's attempt to cut long-term costs and also reduce the influence of the pharmaceutical industry.
On Friday, nearly all of the agency's roughly 80,000 employees received an unsigned email offering them a "voluntary separation incentive payment", with a deadline to respond before March 14. The email was sent to employees across all departments, according to AP and NBC, among others.
The Trump administration, with the help of billionaire Elon Musk, has been trying to drive out federal workers in an effort to cut costs. In January, most federal employees received a deferred severance offer that came with eight months' pay. Thousands of probationary employees have also been laid off at federal agencies, including the departments of health and human services.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. the new health chief of the department, stated in February that he had a "generic list" of employees he wants to fire within the Health and Human Services Department.
– If you care about public health, you’ve got nothing to worry about. If you’re in there working for the pharmaceutical industry, then I’d say you should move out and work for the pharmaceutical industry, he told Fox News.
The Voluntary Separation Incentive Payment Authority allows agencies that downsize or restructure to offer employees one-time payments of up to $25,000 as an incentive to resign voluntarily.
The US Department of Health and Human Services is one of the government's most costly federal agencies, with an annual budget of around $1.7 trillion. Among other things, the agency oversees health insurance for about half the country. Neither the department nor the White House has commented on the incident.
