Incompetence (like you wouldn't believe) in the face of a looming national health crisis

A whistleblower is alleging that HHS officials dispatched more than a dozen workers to aid quarantined Americans evacuated from China, without providing proper training or protective gear — a move that potentially exposed them to the coronavirus infection.

  Politico

No protective gear?!? I hope they had the sense to bring their own.

The complaint from an HHS employee also claims those workers were not consistently tested for the virus, and their deployment came over objections from various HHS staffers.

The whistleblower is now seeking federal protection over allegations that the individual was unfairly and improperly reassigned after bringing concerns about the workers’ safety to HHS officials.

Whistleblowers haven't gotten federal protection since at least Obama's term.

An HHS spokesperson said whistleblower complaints are taken very seriously, and that the department is “providing the complainant all appropriate protections under the Whistleblower Protection Act. We are evaluating the complaint and have nothing further to add at this time.”

Two people with knowledge of the situation told POLITICO the whistleblower’s claims were accurate.

Reports of the complaint outraged some on Capitol Hill, and at least one lawmaker, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), called on HHS Secretary Alex Azar to resign Thursday night.

Yeah, Alex hasn't been doing so well.

Even the Republicans don't trust Trump's coronavirus czar

Presumably they still think Trump is doing a good job as president.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

The swamp recycles

On Wednesday, former Defense Secretary James Mattis rejoined the board of General Dynamics, a massive defense contractor whose IT division works with the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) on issues related to the “needs of unaccompanied children.” Mattis joins John Kelly, former Department of Homeland Security Secretary and White House Chief of Staff, as former Trump cabinet members who helped implement the zero tolerance policy and now stand to benefit from its continued effects and Trump’s immigration policy.

  CREW

Continue reading.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The Nazis are coming for everyone

It just gets worse and worse.

Following a complaint from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is investigating whether the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) violated the law by deleting records of immigrant families split at the border.

CREW’s July 6 complaint followed a report in the New York Times that “[r]ecords linking children to their parents have disappeared, and in some cases have been destroyed, according to two officials of the Department of Homeland Security, leaving the authorities struggling to identify connections between family members.” In hundreds of cases, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents allegedly deleted the initial records in which parents and children were listed together as a family.

  CREW

What reason can they possibly give?

On the other hand, why should we think one Trump administration agency would make an honest investigation into the craven acts of two others?

They're simply stealing people's children

[Washington state Governor Jay] Inslee was part of a conference call with Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar last week, who provided an update on Trump administration efforts to reunite the families it separated as part of a “zero tolerance” policy it says it has now abandoned.

Inslee said Friday he was dismayed to learn that not only was little progress made in reuniting migrant parents and their children, but that officials would not even commit to making an effort to doing so.

  Think Progress

They'll stop taking them away, but they won't give the kids back they already took. 

Washington is one of 17 states, along with the District of Columbia, that is suing the Trump administration, in a bid to immediately reunite kids with parents from whom they were separated at the southwest border.

[...]

“The secretary told us on a conference call that they do not have any intention to reunify these children with their parents. They are going to call it good if they could find anyone else to serve as a foster parent or might have some familial relationship,” Inslee told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes late Friday, when he asked about a June 29 meeting mentioned in a letter addressed to officials on Friday.

This makes me sick to my stomach.

The evil that the rest of the world has known for a long time is plain as day and in our faces now.  What are we going to do about it? 

But this was before a San Diego federal judge issued a preliminary injunction last week to immediately reunite kids with their parents by court-mandated deadlines. It’s unclear whether placing kids in foster care violates that court order.

It violates every principal of human decency and "family values", something the GOP has hammered us with for years to win elections. The GOP is complicit in this Hitlerian horror by enabling the Trump administration, the DOJ and the DHS. If you're a Republican, you need to start checking your conscience.

That's a "yes"

HHS offical placed on leave

According to videos and tweets first uncovered by Media Matters, Ximena Barreto, a deputy director of communications at HHS, repeatedly pushed false claims about the nonexistent pedophilia ring run out of a Washington, D.C., pizzeria, as well as making disparaging comments about African-Americans and Muslims.

An HHS spokeswoman told The Hill that Barreto “has been placed on administrative leave while the matter is reviewed.”

Barreto was hired by HHS in December 2017.

In November 2016, she tweeted that efforts by Hillary Clinton supporters to start an election recount were “a hoax so we get distracted from #Pizzagate.”

She made similar claims in a Periscope video that month.

“Don’t listen to the recount, and relax. We’ve got to use all of our efforts into Pizzagate and not let that one die because that’s what the mainstream media is trying to get distracted from. So check all the Pizzagate stuff,” Barreto said in the video.

  The Hill

I don't understand why they put her on leave for statements like that. Surely that's why she was hired in the first place.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Sexual ignorance is an American tragedy

[David Wiley, a professor of health education at Texas State University, ] was discussing [human papillomavirus] with his students — the different types of HPV, the connection between HPV and cervical cancer, and its prevalence; “you know, just an intro, lower-level course,” he recently recalled — when a male student raised his hand with an earnest question: What was his risk of contracting cervical cancer?

“And I don’t know what’s sadder,” Wiley told The Intercept, “that he asked that question or that really nobody in the classroom even laughed because they didn’t know either.”

The question wasn’t terribly surprising to Wiley, who has been teaching and researching health education — including sex education — for nearly four decades. Many of the students who’ve come through his classes over the years have been woefully uninformed about the workings of their own bodies, he says. But Wiley doesn’t blame the students — after all, “if you never teach people math, how are they going to learn calculus? So, that’s part of our problem: You get exactly what you pay for.”

And in Texas — along with a majority of other states — when it comes to sex education, that means sinking millions into programs that preach to students the virtues of abstinence until marriage while foregoing actual education on sexuality and reproductive health, including the use of contraceptives (aside from emphasizing their failure rates), the prevention of STDs, and the importance of consent.

The federal government began funding so-called Abstinence-Only Until Marriage programs in 1981 as a way to encourage “chastity” and “self-discipline.” Since then, the feds have poured more than $2 billion into this strategy — commonly known as “ab-only” — without any proven positive effects.

[...]

Texas was an eager adopter of the abstinence-only approach, which expanded in 1996 and continued rapid growth during the George W. Bush administration, and has spent more than any other state on ab-only programs. Yet the state has also consistently had among the highest rates of teen pregnancy — it’s currently fifth in the nation; Arkansas is No. 1 — and maintains a stranglehold on the top spot for the number of repeat births to teens (at 24 percent).

  TThe Intercept

You can trace a lot of our problems back to Ronald Reagan. This is just one of them.

Trump, an alleged serial adulterer who has bragged about sexually assaulting women and has been accused of such behavior close to two dozen times, has asked that abstinence funding be increased. And in the budget deal he signed last month, he got his wish, enough to bring total spending on abstinence up to $100 million for 2018.

Oh, the irony. To be fair, though, he doesn't have a clue what he's signing.

Along with the return to Bush-era funding levels to push the ab-only message, Trump has appointed anti-abortion, anti-birth control, and pro-ab-only advocates to positions within the Department of Health and Human Services and has yanked funding for a successful evidence-based teen pregnancy prevention strategy.

And removed helpful women's health pages from the government website.

Given the clear failure of these programs, it’s perhaps unsurprising that ab-only advocates in recent years have made a concerted effort to rebrand their efforts — forsaking the title “abstinence education” in favor of “sexual-risk avoidance” programs, language co-opted from the public health community. Among the biggest proponents of ab-only programs — and their rebranding — is Valerie Huber, a Trump appointee to HHS. Huber started her career promoting ab-only programs in her son’s school before moving on to manage the ab-only program at the Ohio Department of Health. She became the president of the National Abstinence Education Association in 2007. (The advocacy organization has also rebranded itself. It’s now known as Ascend.)

Jesus, these people.

“Our critics like to pigeonhole this as a religious issue,” she said, “but the truth is that this has value for every student regardless of faith or moral framework — or lack thereof.”

Which is why they chose the name "Ascend"?

“They’re trying to rebrand because ‘abstinence-only’ has become a dirty term. There’s no support for abstinence-only programs.” Polling shows that parents “overwhelmingly” want their kids to be getting sex education in the classroom — education that talks about the “value” of abstinence, she says, “but in conjunction with understanding condoms, … contraception, and now, increasingly, wanting young people to know about consent” — none of which the ab-only programs actually do, no matter what they’re called.

[...]

Although the Trump administration’s goal was to completely defund the TPP Program [created during Obama's administration to test science- and evidence-based sex education programs], it lost that bid when lawmakers put money into the new budget to keep it going. Meanwhile, a number of groups involved in the TPP Program — including Planned Parenthood — have sued the administration in federal court, claiming that defunding the project mid-cycle violates the Administrative Procedures Act. [...] The lawsuits, filed last month, are pending.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

GOP war on women advances in the Trump era

The “Breast Cancer” website and related pages were removed from within the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office on Women’s Health (OWH) website [between June and December 2017]. While content about mammogram breast cancer screening remains, informational pages and factsheets about the disease, including symptoms, treatment, risk factors, and public no- or low-cost cancer screening programs, have been entirely removed and are no longer found elsewhere on the OWH site. Among the material removed is information about provisions of the Affordable Care Act that require coverage of no-cost breast cancer screenings for certain women, as well as links to a free cancer screening program administered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The office did not proactively announce or explain the removals. These removals are part of wider changes to the OWH website that include the removal of resources related to lesbian and bisexual health, minority women’s health, and other topics.

[...]

An informational page on “Mammograms,” separate from the “Breast Cancer” website is still live on the OWH site, containing information about common screening procedures.

  Sunlight Foundation

Well, how nice.

Although the “Screening and diagnosis...” page [...] that was part of the “Breast Cancer” website now redirects to the “Mammograms” page, a significant amount of content has been removed and is not included on the “Mammograms” page or elsewhere on the OWH website.

Jesus, these people.

Related: DONALD TRUMP’S EMBRACE OF ABSTINENCE-ONLY SEX ED IS AN ABSURD TWIST ON A FAILED POLICY

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Ben Carson needs to be put out to pasture

Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Ben Carson said some women have said they aren't comfortable being in a homeless shelter with "somebody who had a very different anatomy" when discussing access transgender people have to shelters.

  The Hill

"Some women."

Number one, I doubt that Ben Carson has ever talked to a homeless person, and number two, I doubt that homeless people are as prejudiced against alternate lifestyles as Ben Carson surely is.

Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) [asked] about a move to take away training materials meant to prevent LGBT discrimination in homeless shelters, CNN reported.

"Remember it is complex," Carson said responding to Quigley.

"We obviously believe in equal rights for everybody, including the LGBT community. But we also believe in equal rights for the women in the shelters, and shelters where there are men, and their equal rights. So, we want to look at things that really provide for everybody and doesn't impede the rights of one for the sake of the other."

Sure, that's the concern.

He was further asked how implementing protections for transgender people would impede on peoples' rights.

"There are some women who said they were not comfortable with the idea of being in a shelter, being in a shower, and somebody who had a very different anatomy," he said.

[...]

"It is because of derogatory myths like this, which have been debunked time and time again, that the transgender community faces disproportionate levels of discrimination and homelessness." GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said in a statement.

"Today's blatant and factually inaccurate anti-transgender rhetoric is the latest in a long line of uninformed and biased statements about LGBTQ people that make Dr. Carson unfit to be the head of the Department of Housing and Urban Development."

In any other administration he would be. Things have changed.

Information about LGBT health was removed from a Department of Health and Human Services website last fall, according to new reports from a watchdog group.

The HHS Office of Women’s Health (OWH) removed a webpage with extensive information about lesbian and bisexual health, and links that correspond to that webpage, according to reports the Sunlight Foundation released Wednesday.

The group found that some resources have gone missing and that other similar remaining content relating to lesbian and bisexual health, which was last updated in 2009, has been rendered difficult to access.

  The Hill

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Making America Great Again

At least where women's health and LGBTQ rights are concerned, Trump's constant shit-stirring is a pretty good cover for actually turning back the march of progress.

U.S. health officials said on Friday they were revoking legal guidance issued by the Obama administration that had sought to discourage states from trying to defund organizations that provide abortion services, such as Planned Parenthood.

[...]

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) officials also said the department was issuing a new regulation aimed at protecting healthcare workers’ civil rights based on religious and conscience objections.

  Reuters

A new civil rights division within the Department of Health and Human Services will protect health-care workers who refuse to provide services that run counter to their moral or religious convictions, the Trump administration announced Thursday.

This office will consider complaints from doctors, nurses and others who feel they have been pressured by employers to “perform, accommodate or assist with” procedures that violate their beliefs.

[...]

The administration’s move marks the resurgence of religious liberty advocates within the federal government and represents its latest effort to elevate “conscience protections” within the health care realm.

[...]

In announcing the new division, at an event featuring Republican lawmakers and religious leaders, HHS Acting Secretary Eric Hargan noted that many of the nation's hospitals, clinics and hospices are run by faith-based groups that oppose procedures like abortion and sterilization.

“For too long, too many of these health-care practitioners have been bullied and discriminated against,” he said.

  WaPo

Ah, yes. The old persecution complex so loved by fundamentalists.

[T]he division will not only consider complaints that might have previously languished but will also engage in public education and, possibly, policymaking.

More Bible studies?

Roger Severino said in an interview that OCR has seen a “pretty dramatic uptick” in health-care workers’ complaints related to moral and religious beliefs — from 10 during the entire Obama administration to 34 since Trump’s election.

Wow. Thirty-four whole complaints. I can see why we needed a new governmental department.

On the HHS website Thursday, a Conscience and Religious Freedom section outlined the types of procedures likely to come under intensified federal scrutiny — accompanied by a photo of a female health-care worker in a Muslim headscarf.

Something tells me it won't be the Muslim health care workers who will be getting the benefit of this move.

The description of the division's mandate cites abortion, sterilization and assisted suicide as examples of the types of procedures covered. But legal experts said the language appears likely to also cover a host of other scenarios, such as treating transgender patients or those seeking to transition to the opposite sex.

[...]

[C]onservatives said they now have a chance to challenge state reproductive policies as well as other mandates.

[...]

“Governments big and small have treated conscience claims with hostility instead of protection, but change is coming, and it begins here and now,” Severino said.

So that means we'll soon be getting the right to withhold taxes on a conscience claim, right?

There's already no federal funding for abortion services, so poor women whose only source of health care comes from Medicaid get no relief. But that wasn't enough for the righteous among us.

And who is this Roger Severino guy that Trump appointed to head HHS' "Office of Civil Rights"?

Severino is a longtime anti-LGBTQ activist who served as the director of the DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

  Rewire

Perfect.

“Mr. Severino has built a career on demonizing the transgender community, stoking fear about transgender identity, and—in particular—undermining equal access to health care,” [Rep. Joe Kennedy (D-MA)] said. “It’s clear the President has no intention of keeping the promises he made to LGBTQ Americans.”

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Why?

The National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices, which is funded and administered by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), has existed since 1997 to help people, agencies and organizations identify and implement evidence-based behavioral health programs and practices in their communities, according to the website.

But the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the department under HHS that manages the program, wrote on its website that the contract for the database had been discontinued.

SAMHSA is still "very focused on the development and implementation of evidence-based programs in communities across the nation," the notice says.

SAMHSA's in-house "policy lab" will "lead the effort to reconfigure its approach to identifying and disseminating evidence-base practice and programs."

Because the contract has ended, the database will no longer be updated.

  The Hill

Is this just another mark in the effort of the Trump administration to make us all as ignorant as he is? Or do they actually have a reason for this?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

But of course

Azar has spent most of the past decade inside the drug industry, one of the key sectors he’ll regulate at HHS. Azar joined pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Company in June 2007 as a senior vice president of corporate affairs and communications right after leaving the Bush administration [where he served as deputy secretary of HHS].

[...]

As part of his role at Lilly, Azar served on the board of directors for BIO, a drug lobby.

[...]

Though Trump condemned pharma campaign donations in a Rose Garden press conference on Monday, Azar was one of many drug industry executives who contributed to his campaign.

  Politico

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Good God

Congressman links to Onion story
By MACKENZIE WEINGER 02/06/12   01:57 PM EST  
Updated 02/07/12   11:27 AM EST

Rep. John Fleming has deleted his Facebook post linking to an article in The Onion about a fictional Planned Parenthood “Abortionplex.”

[...]

The May 2011 Onion article details the opening of a “sprawling abortion facility that will allow the organization to terminate unborn lives with an efficiency never before thought possible.” The fictional Abortionplex includes more than 2,000 rooms dedicated to the procedure, as well as “coffee shops, bars, dozens of restaurants and retail outlets, a three-story nightclub, and a 10-screen multiplex theater — features intended not only to help clients relax, but to foster a sense of community and make abortion more of a social event.”

[...]

In a Facebook status on Friday, the Louisiana Republican alerted his followers to The Onion’s May 18, 2011 article, “ Planned Parenthood Opens $8 Billion Abortionplex” and wrote “More on Planned Parenthood, abortion by the wholesale.”

[...]

The blog Literally Unbelievable — which posts Facebook statuses from users who think Onion articles are real — picked up Fleming’s status before the congressman removed it from the social-networking site. Four users liked the post and eight left comments, with one person writing, “The Onion is satire. How exactly did you get elected?”

  Politico

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Neeeeeeeeeext

Donald Trump has chosen a prominent critic of Obamacare as his secretary of health and human services.

  Guardian

Of course.

Congressman Tom Price of Georgia, an orthopedic surgeon who has long been a leading congressional voice in opposition to Barack Obama’s healthcare reform legislation.

I didn't think much of it myself.

Last week, Price said that whatever Republicans do to replace Obama’s healthcare law will bear a “significant resemblance” to a 2015 measure that was vetoed by the president. That bill would have gutted some of the health care law’s main features: Medicaid expansion, subsidies to help middle-class Americans buy private policies, the tax penalties for individuals who refused to get coverage and several taxes to support coverage expansion.

[...]

Price insisted that Republicans can keep the protections for those with existing medical conditions without mandating that all individuals carry coverage or pay a penalty to support an expanded insurance pool.

And while you're at it, you can get rid of that penalty for Medicare applicants who didn't opt for private insurance drug coverage when they turned 65.

Price said Republicans want to address “the real cost drivers” of healthcare price spikes, which he said were not necessarily sicker patients, but a heavy regulatory burden, taxes and lawsuits against medical professionals.

Oh, brother. Deregulation has always helped the middle class, right?

In addition, Indiana health policy consultant Seema Verma [founder and CEO of a health policy consulting firm] was chosen to become administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Verma, an Indiana resident, is best known for her work on Medicaid issues and her close ties to Vice President-elect Mike Pence.

  Politico

Oh swell.

Through her consulting firm SVC Inc., Verma has worked on other high-profile Medicaid expansion proposals for Republican governors. That includes Kentucky, where Republican Gov. Matt [...] Bevin's plan includes a work requirement as a condition of receiving benefits and lockout periods for failure to pay.

Wow. The rest of you will have a new Pence-influenced health care plan: prayer.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Can I Get an Amen?

Limbaugh and his fellow travelers are always one step ahead of liberals who naively persist in believing that at some point, rationality has to win the day. Are we really debating birth control, in 2012? Really?

Yes, yes we are. And there will be even stupider debates, about — god, I don’t even know, breathing air or drinking water — as long as we continue to believe that these are actual “debates” about actual “differences of opinion” rather than just the verbal equivalent of monkey shit flying through the air.

  Tom Tomorrow

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Protecting Our Children

Health and Human Services Sec. Kathleen Sibelius overrules the FDA and refuses to allow Plan B (the morning after pill) to be made available without a prescription to women under 17 years old. She bases this entirely on the stupidity of adolescent girls: “However, the switch from prescription to over the counter for this product requires that we have enough evidence to show that those who use this medicine can understand the label and use the product appropriately.”

So what does the label say that is so hard to comprehend? When the Bush FDA likewise refused to allow the drug to be sold over the counter to minors in 2004, it made the same claim, and since the media didn’t bother telling us what the drug’s instructions were (I bet they won’t today either), I went to my local pharmacy and asked them to print them out. Those instructions: take one pill. 12 hours later, take another pill. That’s it.

  WIIIAI

Well, yes. Our educational system has gone to the crapper.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.