Medicare and Medicaid Employees Offered New Buyouts: What You Need to Know

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Most of the 80,000 federal workers in the Health and Human Services Department (HHS) were emailed an offer to leave their jobs for (up to) a $25,000 payment, as part of President Trump’s government cuts. The mass email was sent to staff at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration, both in Maryland.

Federal employees cannot start opting in until Monday and have until 5 pm on Friday, March 14, to submit a response to the voluntary separation offer. Most federal employees received a deferred resignation offer this past January that came with eight months of pay. Thousands of probationary employees, too, have been fired across federal agencies, including at HHS. (Our article on Trump buyouts looks at this further).

The HHS has an annual budget of about $1.7 trillion that is mainly spent on healthcare coverage for millions of people enrolled in Medicare and Medicaid. According to Data.CMS.gov, Medicare currently serves 68.2 million people, while Medicaid provides coverage to over one in five people living in the U.S., or around 70 million enrollees.

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In an interview last month, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s new health secretary, hinted at plans for deep cuts to the staff. In 2024, he promised to immediately clear out 600 employees at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the nation’s biomedical research arm. “I have a list in my head,” Kennedy said, as reported by the Associated Press, “of potential firings at the agency. He said some workers “made really bad decisions” on nutrition guidelines.

These cuts come at a time when the CDC is assisting with a measles outbreak in West Texas and New Mexico and as lawmakers are debating deep cuts to Medicaid in the federal budget. Since taking office, the Trump administration, with the help of DOGE, has been trying to cut federal workers in what it says is an effort to cut costs, fraud and waste.

As of Sunday, March 9, there was no immediate comment from HHS. In the email, HHS workers are directed to contact their local human resources office to submit for the voluntary separation.

For the past 18+ years, Kathryn has highlighted the humanity in personal finance by shaping stories that identify the opportunities and obstacles in managing a person's finances. All the same, she’ll jump on other equally important topics if needed. Kathryn graduated with a degree in Journalism and lives in Duluth, Minnesota. She joined Kiplinger in 2023 as a contributor.