Unites States Department of Health and Human Services Essay

Unites States Department of Health and Human Services - Essay Example HHS has taken several enforcement actions (as demonstrated by 4 examples). There are many U.S. Court rulings of interest regarding HHS (as demonstrated by 6 examples). The Cabinet is the highest executive branch of the federal government of the United States of America. It consists of officers (each designated as ‘Secretary’ except the Attorney General) whose nomination is first made by the President and later confirmed by the Senate. Each Secretary is the head of a Department (Wikipedia, 2007). Prior to 1979, there existed the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW). In operation since 1953, its affairs were managed by the United States Secretary of Health, Education & Welfare. The last Secretary of this Department was Patricia Roberts Harris (1979). In the years leading up to 1979 there was an increasingly uneasy feeling that the HEW was over-burdened as health, education and welfare assumed greater importance as the American population grew. With its finger on the pulse of the American people, the ruling Democrats took the revolutionary step of reorganizing the HEW. On October 17, 1979, the 39th President of the United States, Jimmy Carter, signed as ordinance the Department of Education Organization Act (PL 96-98). Marking the one and only time in U.S. history that a President used his inherent authority to reorganize a Cabinet-level Department, this Act officially separated the HEW into two Departments – the United States Department of Health & Human S ervices (HHS), and the United States Department of Education (ED). Both HHS and ED started operating officially on May 4, 1980 (Wikipedia, 2007). The HHS was further strengthened on March 31, 1995, when the welfare portfolio was taken from it and entrusted to a newly created independent federal agency called Social Security Administration headed by a commissioner who reported directly to the President. The glaring defects of the much-criticized Aid