Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has quietly gutted the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the small federal agency tasked with figuring out why American healthcare is so pricey and error-prone, as Beth Mole reports for Ars Technica. Staff has shrunk roughly 80%, from about 300 to 74 employees, while Kennedy’s team canceled some 150 grants worth over $250 million and sat on most of the $345 million Congress appropriated for 2026.
Critics Call It Sabotage
Thirty Democratic senators, led by Richard Blumenthal and Tammy Baldwin, gave HHS until August 25 to reverse course, writing bluntly: “This is sabotage of public health. And it must end, immediately.” Canceled projects include rural maternal emergency training, autism screenings for children, reducing overuse of antibiotics, and improving chronic pain management to reduce reliance on opioids.
In a new Annals of Internal Medicine opinion piece, experts Aaron Carroll and David Atkins warn AHRQ is “on the brink,” writing: “This is what it looks like when we stop developing the next generation of health services researchers.”
Related on the SLP
To date, AHRQ-funded work has prevented an estimated 20,500 hospital infection deaths.
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Related on the SLP
National Cancer Institute—world’s premier cancer research center—victim of RFK’s cuts and chaos agenda
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