The United States Secretary of Health and Human Services is the head of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, concerned with health matters. The Secretary is a member of the President's Cabinet. The office was formerly Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare.
In 1979, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare was renamed the Department of Health and Human Services, and its education functions transferred to the new Department of Education. Patricia Roberts Harris headed the department before and after it was renamed.
Nominations to the office of Secretary of HHS are referred to the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee and the Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over Medicare and Medicaid, before confirmation is considered by the full United States Senate.
Under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act the role of the Secretary has been greatly expanded.
Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius was sworn in as Secretary of Health and Human Services by the United States Senate on April 29, 2009.
Read more about United States Secretary Of Health And Human Services: Duties
Famous quotes containing the words united states, united, states, secretary, health, human and/or services:
“You are, I am sure, aware that genuine popular support in the United States is required to carry out any Government policy, foreign or domestic. The American people make up their own minds and no governmental action can change it.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“The United States never lost a war or won a conference.”
—Will Rogers (1879–1935)
“On September 16, 1985, when the Commerce Department announced that the United States had become a debtor nation, the American Empire died.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)
“... the wife of an executive would be a better wife had she been a secretary first. As a secretary, you learn to adjust to the boss’s moods. Many marriages would be happier if the wife would do that.”
—Anne Bogan, U.S. executive secretary. As quoted in Working, book 1, by Studs Terkel (1973)
“The philanthropist too often surrounds mankind with the remembrance of his own cast- off griefs as an atmosphere, and calls it sympathy. We should impart our courage, and not our despair, our health and ease, and not our disease, and take care that this does not spread by contagion.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“These arts open great gates of a future, promising to make the world plastic and to lift human life out of its beggary to a god- like ease and power.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The community and family networks which helped sustain earlier generations have become scarcer for growing numbers of young parents. Those who lack links to these traditional sources of support are hard-pressed to find other resources, given the emphasis in our society on providing treatment services, rather than preventive services and support for health maintenance and well-being.”
—Bernice Weissbourd (20th century)