Earlier this week, the press shop at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) spent taxpayer dollars to host a live‐tweet, in the voice of the HHS building, to respond to press reports that HHS’s building is the ugliest in in Washington, D.C.
If I worked in that shop, I too might spend taxpayer dollars on gimmicky stunts to distract attention from the harms the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) do to patients.
When I read the live‐tweet, it was even worse than I expected. HHS staff made the shameless claims that the department recently “insured a record number of people with quality, affordable health care coverage” and “provided the tools to fight COVID for free.” These claims are a jaw‐dropping mockery of the hundreds of millions of patients whom HHS has harmed and whose earnings the agency has wasted.
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