The Donald Trump government plans to reduce the budget of the United States Ministry of Health, which has already initiated a deep review, at $ 40 billion, reports The Washington Post on Wednesday, April 16, which cites an internal budget document.
This proposal for budget cuts, which is still in the preliminary stage and will have to be approved by Congress, intervenes within the framework of the mass cuts involved by President Donald Trump in the Federal Administration, under the leadership of billionaire Elon Musk.
These 40 billion dollars in cuts would affect the participation of the budget of the Ministry for Fiscal Year 2026 that Congress is responsible for approved. For fiscal year 2024, the latter was $ 121 billion. Therefore, such reduction would be of the order of a third party.
“A reorganization and a deep restructuring”
The total ministry budget is estimated at around 1800 billion dollars, most of them in relation to mandatory spending, largely linked to Medicare and Medicaid public health insurance programs.
Already in March, the Government initiated a massive restructuring of the Ministry of Health, with the abolition of almost a quarter of its workforce.
These employment cuts affected several of their services and the agencies that it supervises, in particular those responsible for the response to epidemics or the approval of new medications.
The proposal consulted by the Washington Post proposes to go further with the budget cuts accompanied by “a reorganization and a deep restructuring of health agencies and social services,” says the newspaper.
In particular, the fusion of multiple branches of the agency in charge of medical research (NIH) and the abolition of programs aimed at improving access to attention in rural areas is expected.
Source: BFM TV
