Article By KELLY HOOPER and CHELSEA CIRRUZZO

Excerpt

‘EXPECTING THE WORST’ — Mass firings across federal health agencies have racked workers who’ve held onto their jobs at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, an agency official who retired last week told Kelly.

Jeff Grant, the former deputy director for operations of the CMS division that oversees Obamacare and other programs, left Friday after a 41-year career in the federal government. He described an agency in wreckage after Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency swept through HHS and fired thousands of workers it deemed unfit for the agency’s needs or inadequate to perform their job’s duties.

Shortly after his retirement became official Friday, Grant sent a fiery open letter to the HHS leader tasked with carrying out the firings, decrying the layoffs as unlawful and disputing the pink slips that 82 of his former employees — about 15 percent of his workforce — received a few weeks ago.

On Monday, Grant launched a consulting firm that will focus on finding new jobs for the fired CMS employees. Grant and other agency employees have said the Trump administration has been indiscriminate in its firings — cutting people who worked on initiatives that advance some of Trump’s policy priorities, like the surprise billing ban he signed into law in his first term.

Here’s some of Kelly’s conversation with Grant, edited for length and clarity…