Quote:
Originally posted by Gattigap
Tommy Thompson. My bet is that Powell is already halfway done with the underground tunnel he's been digging with spoons from the WH cafeteria, but leaving too quickly would be poor form.
OTOH, Thompson could leave tomorrow and few would notice.
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Thompson announced over a year ago that he was leaving at the end of the adiministration. His job was to get the Medicare prescription drug bill through and that was it. Tom Scully, who oversaw that whole fiasco, resigned a soon as the bill was signed.
I, of course, have objections to people in the Executive branch pushing for legislation and then not sticking around to implement it.
I will say, though, that as bad as the HIPAA Privacy Rule is, the Rule as amended in August 2002 was infinitely more workable than the final Rule from December 2000. That is a credit to the Bush Administration. Implementation of HIPAA Transactions and Code Sets, though, was and continues to be a nightmare.
The changes to the EMTALA regulations don't seem to be that bad. The IG needs to be appointed. Janet Rehnquist has been gone for over a year and a half now, and though I like Lew Morris, a permanent replacement needs to be named. That branch of DHHS is the money making enterprise, and it needs leadership. NIH funding has been pretty consistent. The final regs for Stark were surprisingly humane. I do have problems with the FDA, but I think those are systemic, not necessarily administrative. One of the first things that Thompson did when he got there was to change HCFA's (Health Care Financing Administration) name to CMS (Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services). Aside from the name change, I haven't seen much of a difference in the two entities. Must of cost a hell of a lot, though, to rebrand everything. OCR is wholely and completely underfunded, given its new mandate and that's bad for health care. We're left without guidance on the Privacy Rule, and as a result, there is a lot of confusion. I don't know much about the Indian Health Service, and the CDC has been doing good work.
