Oz confirmed as CMS chief; HHS cuts sharply decrease workforce

by: Richard Scott Apr 4, 2025

On April 3, the Senate confirmed Mehmet Oz as CMS Secretary in a 53-45 vote, giving the one-time celebrity TV doctor, cardiothoracic surgeon and Pennsylvania congressional candidate the reins of the federal agency that oversees the Medicare and Medicaid programs.

The confirmation comes as CMS' parent agency, HHS, is drastically reshaping its focus, structure and workforce, as Part B News reported this week. According to the April 7 issue (subscription required):

HHS has announced the dismissal of 10,000 employees Department-wide, which takes the official number of cashiered employees so far to about 20,000. Per a fact sheet accompanying the press release, the cuts include:

300 full-time employees (FTE) from CMS, which HHS claims “will not impact Medicare and Medicaid services.”
3,500 FTE from the Food and Drug Administration.
2,400 FTE from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
1,200 from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

It remains to be seen in which direction Oz plans to take CMS and its Medicare and Medicaid programs that together cover more than 160 million Americans. As Part B News previously reported, Oz has discussed focusing on disease prevention and cutting fraud, waste and abuse as key pillars of his leadership (PBN 12/9/24, subsription required).

Oz also is a proponent of an expansion of Medicare Advantage. As the December issue explained:

In a June 11, 2020, Forbes article, Oz and co-author George Halvorson, former CEO of Kaiser Permanente, proposed “Medicare Advantage For All” — a reimagining of national health care in which “every American who is not on Medicaid [joins] the Medicare Advantage program.”

Oz and Halvorson proposed to pay for this with a 20% payroll tax, of which employers would pay half; thus, they wrote, “individuals would pay no more than 10% of their income to pay for much better coverage than is currently available to most.” The article suggested that traditional Medicare, which the authors dismiss as a “piece-work-payment-model,” would disappear entirely.

The workforce cuts and funding stoppages at HHS remain in a state of limbo, as reports suggest that 20% of the job cuts may not happen, while a federal judge has paused HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s mandate to axe more than $11 billion in public health funding, according to The Hill.

At present, the plan is that HHS will cut its 28 divisions to 15, “including a new Administration for a Healthy America, or AHA,” which will subsume five divisions including the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).

Some divisions will have their work repurposed to the remaining ones; for example, the Administration for Community Living (ACL), which helps keep senior and disabled people in their homes, will see its responsibilities disbursed among CMS, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) and the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE).

Amid the ongoing news breaks and legal proceedings, stay tuned to Part B News for more CMS and HHS coverage.

Blog Tags: CMS, HHS

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