agency

Bipartisan Watchdog Sounds Alarm on Key Federal Health Agency

America’s key health agency, the Health and Human Services Department, is only one step above totally useless, the bipartisan Government Accountability Office just declared. DHHS is “failing to meet its responsibilities.” What will be done about it? Not much.

Health agency a ‘high risk’

The bipartisan federal GAO watchdog just slapped a “high risk” label on the Department of Health and Human Services.

The agency doesn’t have any idea how to lead “the national response to public health emergencies including the coronavirus pandemic, extreme weather disasters and even potential bioterrorist attacks.” The scathing report was released on Thursday, January 27.

The agency earned the “risky” designation, and worked really hard to do it. The problem is that the warning “carries no immediate penalties.” It’s simply meant to be a flashing neon sign to Congress that lawmakers “need to pay special attention” to DHHS operations. Our high-paid health heroes seem to be getting paid for doing “something close to nothing but different from the day before.” The failures, GAO reports, are “long-standing” and “persistent deficiencies.”

These failures “hindered the nation’s response to the current COVID-19 pandemic.” They hint at other big boo-boos too, without going into embarrassing details, lumping them together under “a variety of past threats.”

The conclusion they reach is brutally honest. “If left unaddressed, these deficiencies will continue to hamper the nation’s ability to be prepared for, and effectively respond to, future threats.” They will most likely be left totally unaddressed. Just like all the other warnings issued to the agency.

Americans are beginning to wonder why we have laws in the first place, when nobody seems to be the slightest bit interested in enforcing them. Some of the things that the GAO are really worried about are “managing the medical supply chain, coordinating with federal and state agencies and providing clear and consistent communication to the public and the health care community.” DHHS doesn’t seem able to do any of that.

Patches never applied

The GAO was not happy to report that over the past 15 year’s they’ve had to slap the DHHS on the wrist 115 times. Each and every time they got a promise from the agency to fix the problems. Out of those, 72 of the holes in health safety policy still haven’t been patched. These were all recommendations concerning “public health emergencies.” Just for one example, according to the GAO, “the department has yet to address recommendations from 2020 for resolving supply chain issues, including the availability of diagnostic tests.”

Meanwhile, Imperial Leader Joe Biden is promising every American all the tests they want. Another big issue is communication. “data collection and analysis has been a critical weakness for the government since the start of the pandemic.” Because of that, “decision-makers have had only a partial or late-evolving view of some developments.”

This isn’t a surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention to the goings on inside the agency. As conservative North Carolina Senator Richard Burr points out, the “American people have stopped listening to the CDC because of their confusing and conflicting guidance — justifiably so.”

This particular bombshell of a report was issued in the wake of “bipartisan legislation to overhaul the government’s pandemic response.” Back in 2010 they were ordered by Congress to “put in place a nationwide ‘public health situational awareness’ surveillance system.” We’re still waiting.

The GAO may be just another toothless watchdog but they’re barking their head off that ignoring these problems at the main national health agency could have disastrous results.

The deficiencies “have hindered the nation’s response to the current COVID-19 pandemic and a variety of past threats, including other infectious diseases — such as the H1N1 influenza pandemic, Zika and Ebola.”

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