Michael Astrue

Once again officials within the FDA are proposing to put other interests over the needs of dying patients, predominantly children.

Once again officials within the FDA are proposing to put other interests over the needs of dying patients, predominantly children.

Last year Republicans persuaded a majority of Americans that Obamacare should be "repealed and replaced." Even Americans who voted for Hillary Clinton expected that President Donald Trump and Republican congressional leaders would promptly offer a viable alternative to Obamacare. The president's…

Last year Republicans persuaded a majority of Americans that Obamacare should be “repealed and replaced." Even Americans who voted for Hillary Clinton expected that President Donald Trump and Republican congressional leaders would promptly offer a viable alternative to Obamacare. The president's…

Discontent with Obamacare—and with the delivery of health care more broadly—unites most Americans across our other divisions. That discontent creates enormous opportunities and risks for our president-elect.

Discontent with Obamacare—and with the delivery of health care more broadly—unites most Americans across our other divisions. That discontent creates enormous opportunities and risks for our president-elect.

Think back to the Ebola chaos of last year. Nobody except the caregivers came away looking good​—​not the White House, not the Department of Health and Human Services, not the World Health Organization, not Congress, not most of the media.

Even before the launch of Obamacare, one of the few things that was clear about the program was that the Bush-appointed HHS inspector general, Daniel Levinson, placed self-preservation above his statutory duty to bring public attention to Obamacare’s waste, fraud and abuse. It is a point I have…

Hillary Clinton’s email problems do not end with her illegal privatization of government communications or her Nixonian stonewalling of questions about how much of her public record she has destroyed in order to avoid public scrutiny.

In the froth and frenzy surrounding Ebola reaching America, a surprisingly unprepared Department of Health and Human Services, particularly the Centers for Disease Control, largely failed to rise to the challenge. The FDA contributed to, and continues to contribute to, that lack of preparedness.…

President Obama has had to acknowledge two big lies of the Affordable Care Act: (1) You could keep your health insurance plan; and (2) the HealthCare.gov website would be fully operational at launch. Unless he acts with urgency, he will also be forced to apologize for assuring us that personal data…

Now that Washington has acknowledged cultural malaise and a broad failure to provide timely access to health care at the Department of Veterans Affairs, Congress and the executive branch are competing frantically to show the public how hard they are working to fix that failure.

One of the ironies of the Affordable Care Act is that many of the governors who zealously supported the bill failed spectacularly in its implementation. Oregon, Maryland, and Minnesota are among the most prominent failures. The Massachusetts exchange, the primary inspiration for the ACA exchanges,…

I did not get to know Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki when we served together in the Obama administration, but in our limited interactions I liked him. He struck me as polite, smart, earnest and hard-working. Over time he resisted the ego-tripping that many agency heads find…

Politics at its best brings people and groups together in unexpected ways. Although the Reagan administration responded sluggishly to the emergence of HIV in the 1980s, its last FDA commissioner, Frank Young, reached out to the very HIV activists who had for years made life miserable for him and…

The January 31, 2014, Boston Globe front page included two life-and-death stories. One announced that the U.S. Department of Justice would seek the death penalty for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who is facing trial for the Boston Marathon bombing. Animated debate about the proper penalty for Tsarnaev…

The launch of the health exchanges has produced diverse images of failure: blank screens, improperly released Social Security numbers; a White House official undermining congressional oversight on September 6, 2013, with a phony security certification; and political appointees blaming their…

For over a year it has been common knowledge within the Obama administration that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) could not launch its network of health exchanges for the Affordable Care Act in a minimally acceptable way. That knowledge did not stop the HHS publicity machine from…

In my recent WEEKLY STANDARD essay, “Privacy Be Damned,” I warned about the operational problems and privacy issues raised by the “health exchanges” that HHS will force tens of millions of Americans to use as of October 1 of this year. In that essay, I noted that “the HHS inspector general and the…

I have been dismayed, but unsurprised, to see that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is already spinning the launch of its federal health insurance exchange this October. The federal and state “exchanges”​—​HHS recently rebranded them “marketplaces”​—​are a linchpin of the…