Here’s another odd story about how the Department of Health and Human Services works.   Early in the Easley Administration, when Lanier Cansler was Assistant Secretary, the department decided to ‘Reform Mental Health’ in order to save taxpayers money and provide better care.   About the same time Assistant Secretary Cansler was handling bidding…

Back in August in her rush to pass the budget and get the legislature out of town, it looks like Governor Perdue slipped up and pulled a number out of thin air. What the Governor did to balance the budget (at least on paper) was tell legislators she was going to cut the Department of…

  Back in 1984 when Governor Hunt fessed up to making political trips on the state airplane and reimbursed the state $180,000, Tom Ellis, the attorney running Jesse Helms’ campaign to defeat Hunt told me, You know, give a politician a free airplane and he’ll hang himself every time.   It turns out – for…

The famous Boss Plunket of Tammany Hall, explaining his singular talent for getting the most out of politics (and what he called “honest graft”), told his biographer, ‘I just seen my opportunities and took ‘em.’   At first glance Boss Plunkett, who was a colorful New York Irish politician, and DHHS Secretary Lanier Cansler, a…

  It turns out Craigan L. Gray, the MD and JD (lawyer) and newly appointed Director of Medicaid is pretty thin skinned.   When Tim Rogers – head of the Association for Home and Hospice Care – asked Secretary Lanier Cansler to reconsider Gray’s cuts in a tiny Medicaid program that provides nurses to care…

Right now if you’re a Medicaid patient or are a nurse or a nurse’s aide who cares for a patient you’re facing hard times – your medical care’s being cut or your hours are being cut or your pay’s being cut, by Craigan Gray Medicaid Director at DHHS.   But if you’re one of the…