Do you ever wonder how we came to have so many layers of bureaucracy in healthcare? The history of the Health and Human Services (HHS) Department goes back to the earliest days of our nation. The following summary was taken from the HHS website and sheds some light as to how and when many of its’ departments were created.
In the year:
1798 : Passage of an act for the relief of sick and disabled seamen, which established a federal network of hospitals for the care of merchant seamen, forerunner of today’s U.S. Public Health Service.
1862 : President Lincoln appointed a chemist, Charles M. Wetherill, to serve in the new Department of Agriculture. This was the beginning of the Bureau of Chemistry, forerunner to the Food and Drug Administration.
1871 : Appointment of the first Supervising Surgeon (later called Surgeon General) for the Marine Hospital Service, which had been organized the prior year.
1887 : The federal government opened a one-room laboratory on Staten Island for research on disease, thereby planting the seed that was to grow into the National Institutes of Health which was formally established in 1930.
1906 : Congress passed the Pure Food and Drugs Act, authorizing the government to monitor the purity of foods and the safety of medicines, now a responsibility of the FDA.
1921 : The Bureau of Indian Affairs Health Division was created, the forerunner tothe Indian Health Service.
1946 : The Communicable Disease Center was established, forerunner of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
1953: The Cabinet-level Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) was created under President Eisenhower. HEW became the Department of Health and Human Services, officially arriving on May 4, 1980.
1965: The Medicare, Medicaid and Head Start programs were created. In 1977, the Health Care Financing Administration was created to manage Medicare and Medicaid separately from the Social Security Administration.
1989 : Creation of the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (now the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality).
1995 : The Social Security Administration became an independent agency.
2001 : The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is created, replacing the Health Care Financing Administration.
Finally, in 2003 : the Medicare Prescription Drug Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003, the most significant expansion of Medicare since its enactment, including a prescription drug benefit, was enacted.