The Axe Rises Over Medicare and Medicaid
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Source: Talking Points Memo
April 3, 2025 6:00 p.m.
Earlier this week I noted the fact that the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services had been oddly immune thus far to the DOGE axe, not just compared to other HHS divisions and agencies but across almost the entire federal government. This seemed in large part because of the role Brad Smith, a key DOGEr who worked at CMS during Trump’s first term, and because of nominal DOGE chief Amy Gleason who worked in high level roles at Smith’s companies. I noted that relative immunity because there were signs that might soon change. It has now changed.
On March 31st, CMS COO Amy Brandt sent out instructions for major cuts that had to take place across CMS. As she explained, HHS had been assigned a total amount of savings from canceled contracts. And of that total amount CMS was responsible for just over $2.7 billion.
That amounted to 35% of CMS’s average total spend on contracts from the years FY2023 and 2024. So in technical terms, a shit-ton of money and a huge percentage of the overall budget.
As career CMS people have explained to me, CMS’s work is almost entirely contracted out. So this isn’t a case where you have most stuff done in house and some subset of the work is contracted out. It’s almost entirely contracted out. I further learned that the IT component is responsible for at least $750 million of that. The request came down on March 31st with responses due on April 3rd, i.e., today. So four days to decide how to cut more than a quarter of the CMS budget.
Read more: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-axe-rises-over-medicare-and-medicaid
As I have posted before - over 1/2 of the federal government IS "contracted out" to private industry. They think they are only slashing civil service employees but every cancelled contract is destroying some PRIVATE business.
(from here - https://www.brookings.edu/articles/is-government-too-big-reflections-on-the-size-and-composition-of-todays-federal-government/)
= new reply since forum marked as read
They are so brainwashed that they think that "contracts" are just "money going to civil servants". 
I mean we're talking companies like Oracle, Booz-Allen-Hamilton, Deloitte (who I saw got slashed and burned), Hewlett-Packard, Cisco, etc.
