Unites States Department of Health and Human Services Essay

Unites States part of Health and Human Services - Essay ExampleHHS has taken several enforcement actions (as demo 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 politics of the United States of America. It consists of officers (each designated as depository 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, fosterage 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 wellbeing assumed greater importance as t he 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 thirty-ninth 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 Services (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 at present to the President. The glaring defects of the much -criticized Aid