‘On the brink’: RFK Jr.’s HHS guts agency built to help fix America’s broken healthcare system Ars Technica | August 25, 2026

https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2026/08/25/on-the-brink-rfk-jr-s-hhs-guts-agency-built-to-help-fix-americas-broken-healthcare-system/ 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.