Lanier Cansler

Lanier Cansler
Residence North Carolina
Nationality American
Occupation Politician
Website Official website

Lanier Cansler is an American businessman and politician. His tenure as Secretary of the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services received a fair degree of press. After resigning in 2012, he founded a private consulting firm on the North Carolina medical industry.[1]

Career

Early years

Cansler worked as a certified public accountant starting in the mid-1970s, and over the next two decades he focused his practice on "business strategy and tax compliance and planning" for healthcare providers.[1]

North Carolina General Assembly

He was elected to the North Carolina General Assembly in 1994.[1] While in the North Carolina House of Representatives, he "various healthcare committees including the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Health and Human Services Appropriations as well as the Healthcare Oversight Committee."[1]

In 2001, he left his seat in the House of Representatives to be come Chief Deputy Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, a role he held until 2009.[1]

With DHHS (2009–2012)

Lanier Cansler was appointed as Secretary of DHHS in 2009. One of his first actions was to create a zero-tolerance policy for patient abuse.[2] A year later, former house co-speaker Richard T. Morgan filed an ethics complaint against Cansler, alleging a conflict of interest when Cansler awarded a no-bid HHS contract to one of his former lobbying clients, Carolinas Center for Medical Excellence. The claim would be dismissed early the next year.[3]

In early 2011, Republican lawmakers passed a $19.7 billion state budget that dictated cutting $356 million[4] in state Medicaid funding by April 2012, with a provision requiring DHHS to make their own budget changes to achieve the cut. In August 2011, Cansler announced that DHHS would find it "next to impossible to achieve this budget," noting that the relatively long federal approval process for budget cuts might make the April 2012 deadline untenable. Cansler explained that without legislative approval of cuts granted in a timely manner, to meet the deadline DHHS would "have to make additional reductions,"[5] including potentially cutting services defined as "optional" such as podiatry, dental care, organ transplants and hearing aids.[4] To allow input on what to cut, Cansler made North Carolina Medical Care Advisory Committee meetings public.[5]

By October 2011, DHHS was facing a projected $139 million budget shortfall for Medicaid, partly because of "other agency liabilities that weren't paid for in the spending plan."[4] After creating a list of potential DHHS budget cuts for the General Assembly, on October 27, 2011, Cansler wrote a letter to Governor Perdue, arguing that forced DHHS cuts to meet the shortfall would be "devastating" to patients and health care providers in North Carolina.[6]

On January 13, 2012,[2] Cansler resigned from his role as secretary of DHHS, giving a two-week warning.[3] Governor Perdue named her senior policy advisor, Al Delia, as acting secretary of the department in early February.[7] At the time, Cansler stated in interviews that he'd grown frustrated with the "political contest" over funding in the state legislature.[2][8]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 "Lanier Cansler - Cansler Collaborative Resources". canslercollaborativeresources.com. Retrieved 2016-04-14.
  2. 1 2 3 "Outgoing DHHS chief: Politics led to frustration". WRAL. January 31, 2012. Retrieved 2016-04-11.
  3. 1 2 Leslie, Laura (January 13, 2012). "Cansler departs DHHS". WRAL. Retrieved 2016-04-11.
  4. 1 2 3 Leslie, Laura (October 27, 2011). "NC Medicaid cuts lead to blame game". WRAL. Retrieved 2016-04-11.
  5. 1 2 "State Medicaid cuts won't be easy, DHHS chief says". WRAL. August 4, 2011. Retrieved 2016-04-11.
  6. ↑ Cansler, Lanier (October 27, 2011). "Letter to Beverly Eaves Perdue, Governor" (PDF). North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services. Retrieved 2016-04-11.
  7. ↑ Leslie, Laura (January 13, 2012). "DHHS secretary to step down". WRAL. Retrieved 2016-04-11.
  8. ↑ "Interview With Outgoing NC DHHS Secretary Lanier Cansler". North Carolina Health News. February 1, 2012. Retrieved 2016-04-11.

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 6/2/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.