Brooks-LaSure Frontrunner To Head CMS
She helped launch the ACA as a top Obama administration official.
Chiquita Brooks-LaSure is the leading candidate for the CMS administrator’s job in the Biden administration, Politico reported earlier today.
Brooks-LaSure has edged out North Carolina health secretary Mandy Cohen for the post, according to Politico.
Brooks-LaSure is now a managing director of Manatt Health, a consulting firm, but she has held several government positions. Her LinkedIn profile says she was director of coverage policy in the Office of Health Reform at HHS from April 2010 to December 2012 and then director of policy and regulation at CMS from December 2012 to May 2014. Politico describes her as having launched the ACA.
Her LinkedIn profile says she has a master of public policy degree from Georgetown and a bachelor's degree from Princeton.
If Biden nominates Brooks-LaSure as his CMS administrator, that would leave the FDA commissioner as the most prominent health position for which Biden hasn’t made a selection.
CMS administrators need to be confirmed by the Senate, so Biden can nominate someone but can‘t name to the person to the position outright.
Biden’s other picks for top health positions include Xavier Becerra, the California attorney general, for HHS secretary; Vivek Murthy, a surgeon general during the Obama administration for a return to that position; and Rochelle Walensky, for director of the CDC. The Senate doesn’t confirm CDC directors so Walensky has officially taken that position.
If Brooks-LaSure is confirmed, she would succeed Seema Verma as CMS administrator.
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