Michael Johns

Michael Johns (September 8, 1964 - ) is an American health care executive, former federal government of the United States official and conservative policy analyst and writer.

Biography

Born September 8, 1964 in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Graduate, Emmaus High School (Emmaus, Pennsylvania), 1982. Bachelors in Business Administration, University of Miami (Coral Gables, Florida), 1986. Also attended Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge University (Cambridge, England). Resides currently in Deptford, New Jersey.

Related Topics:
Allentown, Pennsylvania - Emmaus, Pennsylvania - 1982 - University of Miami - 1986 - Gonville and Caius College - Cambridge University - Deptford, New Jersey

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Health care industry

A major force in corporate health care, Johns has served with global pharmaceutical powerhouse Eli Lilly, in the health care practice of a leading Philadelphia consulting firm and, since 2000, as vice president of Gentiva Health Services, a Fortune 1000 corporation. As part of Gentiva senior management, Johns has helped lead a quintupling of the company's market capitalization and one of the largest health care acquisitions in recent years http://www.biospace.com/news_story.cfm?StoryID=7420415&full=1. He also has defended the interests of publicly-traded companies, including as a founding member of the CEO Council.

Related Topics:
Pharmaceutical - Eli Lilly - Philadelphia - Gentiva Health Services - Fortune 1000 - Market capitalization

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In his health care roles, Johns has advocated a moderate course on American health care policy, vigorously supporting the need to protect biopharmaceutical and free market health care innovation, while simultaneously defending the need to protect Medicare, Medicaid and other governmental health programs for the nation's elderly, poor and disabled.

Related Topics:
Free market - Medicare - Medicaid

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Government and public policy

A versatile and influential advocate for many of the prominent themes of mainstream conservatism, Johns also has held high-level posts in American government and public policy. His writings on American foreign policy in the 1980s helped shape and promote the foreign policy of the Reagan administration. He was one of the original advocates of the so-called "Reagan Doctrine," successfully urging the United States to support forces opposing Soviet client states and one of the first Reagan Doctrine advocates to actually visit the front lines of these hot spots (Angola, Cambodia, Nicaragua, and the former Soviet Republics) with regularity. Johns also was a close advisor to Angola's Jonas Savimbi, whose Cold War conflict with Soviet-aligned Angola became a central Cold War sub-plot.

Related Topics:
Conservatism - Reagan Doctrine - Angola - Cambodia - Nicaragua - Jonas Savimbi - Cold War

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He is credited with helping shift Washington's intellectual tide away from containment of the Soviet Union (as advocated by post-war American leaders, such as Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman) and toward a more aggressive approach dedicated to the "rollback" of global communism. Many historians now credit this latter approach with leading, or at least accelerating, the collapse of the former Soviet Union.

Related Topics:
Soviet Union - Franklin D. Roosevelt - Harry S. Truman - Rollback - Communism

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Johns also was one the most vocal U.S. conservatives in defending Ronald Reagan's controversial description of the former Soviet Union as an "evil empire." In a lengthy Policy Review article, "Seventy Years of Evil: Soviet Crimes from Lenin to Gorbachev," for instance, Johns labeled the Soviet system "history's most sophisticated apparatus of rule by terror" and lambasted its "crushing of the human spirit." He offered 208 examples, dating back to the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, that, he argued, warranted the labeling of the Soviet system as evil.http://www.highbeam.com/library/doc0.asp?docid=1G1:6284431&refid=ink_overture_g10_pub

Related Topics:
Ronald Reagan - Evil empire - Policy Review - Bolshevik Revolution - Evil

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Following the Cold War's end, Johns helped advance pro-active American engagement in the post-Cold War world, running U.S. government-funded international economic and political development projects in post-war Kuwait, Turkey and other nations.

Related Topics:
Kuwait - Turkey

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In the 1990s, he also was a prominent critic of several components of the Clinton administration's foreign policy. As the United Nations, with support from the Clinton administration, began repatriating Thailand-based Hmong veterans from Vietnam's "Secret War" to Laos, Johns was one of several influential opponents of the policy, labeling it a "betrayal" http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_n20_v47/ai_17443642. Johns' position on the issue drew support, and the U.N. repatriation ultimately was haulted. Tens of thousands of Hmong refugees at Wat Tham Krabok and various Thailand refugee camps subsequently were afforded expedited United States immigration rights.

Related Topics:
Clinton administration's - United Nations - Repatriating - Thailand - Hmong - Vietnam's "Secret War" - Laos - Wat Tham Krabok - Refugee

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Johns has been a leading national voice while at the conservative Heritage Foundation and has worked closely with leading figures on the American right. But he also has been tapped by moderate Republicans, including former New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean, U.S. Senator Olympia Snowe and President of the United States George H. W. Bush (for whom he served as a White House speechwriter) to help advance Republican policies. In the first Bush White House, he helped define and advocate some of the policies that have come to be known as "compassionate conservatism," focusing on outreach to low and middle-income Americans and non-traditional Republican constituencies.

Related Topics:
Heritage Foundation - Thomas Kean - Olympia Snowe - President of the United States - George H. W. Bush

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