President Bush on Friday named Mark McClellan, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, to run the agency that oversees Medicare. The move puts one of Bush’s most trusted health advisers in charge of carrying out complex, politically delicate changes to the program.
The appointment comes three months after Bush signed legislation that adds prescription drug benefits to Medicare. If McClellan wins Senate confirmation, as key senators of both parties predicted, the job will mark the third senior health policy post he has occupied in the Bush administration.
A physician and health economist who developed smooth working relationships on Capitol Hill, McClellan, 40, was a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers before moving to the FDA 16 months ago.
As administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, McClellan would oversee the nation’s two largest public health insurance programs that, together, provide about $700 billion per year in benefits. Medicaid covers 43 million low-income Americans, while Medicare insures 40 million elderly and disabled people.
He would take over the agency as the administration is beginning to implement the new Medicare law, which is designed to tilt the program toward the private sector, in addition to offering older people the first federal help in affording medicine. The law is drawing intense criticism from Democrats and some Republicans in Congress.
As a first step, the agency is starting a temporary program, scheduled to begin this spring, in which Medicare patients buy cards through private companies and groups that negotiate discounted drug prices. The program is a bridge until the drug subsidies start in 2006.
As McClellan’s appointment drew praise from senators across the political spectrum, Democratic and GOP aides predicted that his confirmation would be easy and quick. Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), one of the leading critics of the new Medicare law, said McClellan was “a superb choice.”
McClellan is the older brother of White House spokesman Scott McClellan.
