Oregon and Washington have joined 21 other states and the District of Columbia to sue the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services over its plan to claw back about $11.4 billion in public health funds nationally.
Oregon officials said last week the federal cuts planned for the state amount to about $117 million, an amount that would eviscerate a range of public health programs and likely force layoffs in the Oregon Health Authority, county health departments and nonprofits that provide health care.
“We can’t stand by idly while the very foundation of our public health system is dismantled,” Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield said Tuesday in announcing Oregon has joined the lawsuit. He said the Department of Health and Human Services and its secretary, Robert Kennedy Jr., “have made a dangerous mistake.”
In Washington, the impact would be $160 million, officials said.
In announcing the sudden cuts, federal officials argued that the awards had been granted as part of a strategy to battle the “nonexistent” COVID-19 pandemic, and Americans have “moved on.” At about the same time, HHS said it would close five regional offices and terminate an additional 10,000 employees, reducing the agency’s workforce by roughly a quarter.
The states, which filed the suit in federal district court in Rhode Island, are asking a judge to block the department’s termination of the grants, saying it would cause “significant and irreparable harm.” They point out that the grants have been approved and awarded, and continued with Congressional approval, and that the sudden clawback of money would disrupt a range of public health services.
In Oregon, state officials said the terminations would threaten programs to prevent and treat substance abuse, rural and tribal health care services, the treatment of diseases that could be prevented with vaccines, and monitoring and testing of contagious respiratory diseases.
“For the counties that will be losing funds, it will be devastating,” Sarah Lochner, executive director of the Oregon Coalition of Local Health Officials, told The Lund Report.
