Tag: HHS

‘HHS has been kicked in the teeth’

After 100 days of coronavirus, mixed signals from Trump and near-daily pounding by critics, the health department is at its wits’ end.

The coronavirus outbreak burning its way through the United States has taken a different kind of toll on staff at the center of the nation’s response.

Officials here, at the Health and Human Services department headquarters, have worked around the clock since mid-January to first prepare for the possible Covid-19 outbreak and then manage the pandemic it became. But the Trump administration’s repeated stumbles have provoked a daily deluge of attacks, watchdog probes and open speculation about the future of the department’s leader, Secretary Alex Azar, culminating in a spate of reports about how White House officials were discussing Azar’s potential replacements this past weekend.

While President Donald Trump swiftly rejected those reports and praised Azar, more than 15 current and former staff who spoke to POLITICO described an atmosphere of exhaustion and dysfunction — capped off by White House efforts to weaken the health secretary. Continue reading.

Enraged Trump Wanted To Fire CDC Official Who Warned Against Virus

In a deeply reported Wall Street Journal piece on Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar’s mishandling of the coronavirus crisis, a bombshell detail buried in the story cast light on President Donald Trump’s own disastrous instincts.

According to the report, Trump wanted to fire Dr. Nancy Messonnier — the official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who first shared the gravity of the pandemic with the American people.

On Feb. 25, after Trump had spent a month downplaying the outbreak and defending China’s honesty in its response, Messonnier sent a clear signal about just how bad things could get. Continue reading.

HHS Political Appointees’ Résumés Show Ties to Price, Pence

The following article by Lauren Clason and Mary Ellen McIntire was posted on the Roll Call website January 8, 2018:

President Donald Trump and Former Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price arrive in the Capitol to meet with House Republicans on March 21.

Political appointees at the Department of Health and Human Services include at least 16 staffers with ties to former Secretary Tom Price and at least 12 with connections to Vice President Mike Penceor Indiana, a review of 129 résumés of appointed staffers in the department shows.

Pence’s influence over the agency can be seen in the appointment of Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma, who worked closely with the former Indiana governor to expand Medicaid in that state, and the appointment of Verma’s deputy Brian Neale, who currently oversees Medicaid and served as Pence’s health care policy director in Indiana. A number of staffers also have ties to conservative groups close to Pence, such as the Heritage Foundation and anti-abortion organizations. Continue reading “HHS Political Appointees’ Résumés Show Ties to Price, Pence”

Without Strong Unions, Middle-Class Families Bring Home a Smaller Share

The following article by Alex Rowell and David Madland was posted on the Center for American Progress website September 14, 2017:

New data from the U.S. Census Bureau show that in 2016, the median U.S. household earned $59,039, a 3.2 percent increase from the previous year. Seven years after the end of the Great Recession, the median household’s income has approximately recovered to its pre-recession level, when adjusted for inflation, but has effectively remained stagnant since the late 1990s.

Middle-class households are not seeing the high levels of income growth that are being enjoyed by America’s highest-income earners. Furthermore, the share of income that is earned by the middle 60 percent of households, by income, has fallen to record lows. A revitalized union movement could help reverse the decades-long trend of growing inequality and a shrinking middle class. But anti-union attacks at the state and national levels threaten to further tilt our nation’s economy against workers. Continue reading “Without Strong Unions, Middle-Class Families Bring Home a Smaller Share”