Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is moving forward with President Donald Trump’s 10:1 deregulation agenda with a call for public input and the immediate rescindment of four guidance documents.
Tuesday morning, RFK Jr.’s department and the Food and Drug Administration launched a 60-day request for information (RFI). The department and its subagency are interested in hearing about “outdated or unnecessary regulations” that the secretary said are hampering competition and restricting the practice of healthcare.
“HHS needs to make sure that our regulatory framework is clear, predictable and allows providers to focus on preventing and treating chronic disease instead of clearing unnecessary regulatory hurdles,” RFK Jr. said in a video announcement.
“We’re going to maintain and even strengthen the regulations that genuinely protect the public, and we will reduce and eliminate regulations that thwart innovation and gum up the system with paperwork. We will especially focus on eliminating regulations that prevent providers from putting patients first.”
RFK Jr., also in the video, said the regulations are more burdensome to smaller companies and independent providers than to larger corporations, and suggested that “it’s possible that these corporations were responsible for writing a lot of these regulations in the first place.”
In line with the president’s Jan. 31 executive order, the HHS will be pulling 10 or more regulations for every new one that is introduced, and the total cost of all new regulations in the current fiscal year will be “significantly less than zero.” Included among those are formal regulations, guidance documents, memoranda, policy statements and other directives.
Concurrently, RFK Jr. also filed a notice Tuesday morning in the Federal Register (to be published Wednesday) ordering four informal guidance documents be rescinded immediately.
The documents, he wrote, “have been superseded, are unduly burdensome, no longer represent the considered legal judgment of HHS, and/or are otherwise appropriate for rescission.” The guidances were promulgated without a notice and comment period—though one should have been—and so may be rescinded in the same manner, “especially following a change of administration now that they are defunct,” he wrote.
The four rescinded guidance documents comprised a July 2021 action designating certain scarce health resources as necessary to the COVID-19 response, which had been terminated later that year; a March 2001 action that shifted the starting and ending date of certain opioid regulations; an April 2021 action on buprenorphine administration; and a May 2021 action that had included sexual orientation and gender identity among Affordable Care Act discriminations on the basis of sex.
“This is the beginning of a new era for HHS and American health more broadly,” RFK Jr. wrote. “In this new era, patient choice and individual freedom will predominate over burdensome federal regulations. In this document, we are taking the first step towards making that a reality.”
Similar calls for input around deregulation have already been issued in recent months by other federal agencies inside and out of the HHS.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, for instance, included such calls in major rules required by statute, such as the proposed Inpatient Prospective Payment Systems fiscal year 2026.
The healthcare industry has already begun responding to calls from other departments—the American Hospital Association (AHA) on May 12 submitted 100 suggestions for regulatory relief to the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB’s) RFI. These largely centered on administrative requirements such as billing and payment, regulations around quality and patient safety, restrictions on telehealth and requirements the association said are contributing to workforce burnout.
“The Trump administration has rightly pointed out that the health status of too many Americans does not reflect the greatness or wealth of our nation,” AHA President and CEO Rick Pollack said in a Monday statement. “Excessive regulatory and administrative burdens are a key contributor, as they add unnecessary cost to the healthcare system, reduce patient access to care and stifle innovation.”
Alongside the top-line 10:1 order, the president has instructed agency heads to work with OMB and the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) on a full review of the regulations within their jurisdiction.
The DOGE’s website outlining its cost-cutting actions was recently updated to include a leaderboard for federal agencies ranking where the most regulations had been cut by estimated saving and total words deleted. As of a May 12 update, HHS was ranked fourth behind the Department of the Interior, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Department of Energy.