RFK Jr.: Im fighting chronic disease, slashing unhealthy fat at HHS

I became Secretary of Health and Human Services with one overarching goal —  to Make America Healthy Again — and that is exactly what I have set out to do in my first two months at the department.Our health-care system is not working for the average American.Study after study shows that America spends more on health care than any other country in the world by a large margin. At HHS alone, we spend $1.7 trillion annually.

This is nearly one-third of our entire federal budget and almost 7% of our country’s gross domestic product.Despite this extravagant spending, our country’s health is declining.America has the highest rates of chronic disease in the world.We rank last in terms of health among developed nations. And life expectancy is declining for many groups of Americans.Spending more money and doing the same things is not going to fix our problem.That is why we are undertaking radical change at HHS.I inherited an agency with approximately 82,000 employees working across 28 different divisions.Many of these offices contain duplicative and redundant functions, in many cases as the result of pet projects or crises that may have happened 20, 30 or even 40 years ago.We are not focusing on the right problems, and we are not coordinating our resources in an effective way.The problem has only gotten worse since COVID.Over the past five years, the department’s budget has ballooned, growing by 38% from $1.2 trillion to $1.7 trillion.

At the same time, our number of employees has increased 17%.Unfortunately, this extra spending and staff has not improved our nation’s health as a country.Instead, it has only created more waste, administrative bloat and duplication.But we are changing this.As soon as I came into office, we offered our employees, especially those who were not aligned with our mission, the chance to resign gracefully.Nearly 10,000 HHS employees voluntarily chose to depart through our Deferred Resignation Program, Voluntary Early Retirement Auth...