White House readying order to fire thousands of federal health workers, WSJ says

The White House is working on an executive order that could come as soon as next week that will direct the firing of thousands of U.S. Department of Health and Human Services workers, people familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal’s Liz Essley Whyte and Betsy McKay. Under the order, the Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other health agencies would have to cut a certain percentage of employees, the Journal noted. Publicly traded pharmaceutical companies include AstraZeneca (AZN), Bristol Myers (BMY), Eli Lilly (LLY), GSK (GSK), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), Merck (MRK), Novartis (NVS), Pfizer (PFE), Roche (RHHBY) and Sanofi (SNY). Publicly traded hospital companies include Community Health (CYH), HCA Healthcare (HCA), Tenet Healthcare (THC) and Universal Health (UHS). Publicly traded healthcare insurance companies include CVS Health (CVS), Centene (CNC), Cigna (CI), Elevance Health (ELV), Humana (HUM), Molina Healthcare (MOH) and UnitedHealth (UNH).