Ariel Cohen | (TNS) CQ-Roll Call
President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to involve anti-vaccine activist and conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in his next administration in some capacity, but whoever else he picks to run the major health agencies will have a major impact on the GOP health agenda of the next four years.
Top posts require Senate confirmation, meaning Trump will need Senate buy-in too. Positions include Health and Human Services secretary, which requires Senate confirmation; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director, which will require Senate confirmation beginning in January 2025; Food and Drug Administration commissioner and National Institutes of Health director, which also require Senate confirmation.
Republican health priorities will likely include increased health care transparency and lowering drug costs, as well as limiting health care access for LGBTQ individuals and, potentially, further limiting access to abortion. This might look like rolling back Title X regulations, which are federal dollars for family planning, or the Mexico City policy, which blocks federal funding for nongovernmental organizations that provide abortion counseling or services.
It could also look like rollbacks of rules regarding nondiscrimination in health care, drug price negotiation interference or nursing home staffing mandates.
Here are some of the names being mentioned for future Trump health policy roles:
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Trump reiterated his pledge to involve RFK Jr. in his administration during his victory speech on Tuesday, but it’s unlikely he’ll be nominated to lead a major agency.
“He’s going to help make America healthy again. He’s a great guy and he really means it. He wants to do some things, and we’re going to let him go to it,” Trump told supporters at the West Palm Beach Convention Center during his victory speech Tuesday night.
In an MSNBC interview on Wednesday morning, Kennedy said he would clear out entire departments of the FDA, including the nutrition department, which was recently revamped as part of the agency’s effort to create a Human Foods Program.
Many experts say they imagine Kennedy will serve more as an informal adviser to Trump, because it could be difficult to get a majority of senators, even in a GOP-led chamber, to confirm him.
“I see someone like that a little more in kind of the Elon Musk type of role … somebody who is whispering in the ear of the administration,” said K&L Gates government affairs adviser and former RNC delegate Amy Carnevale.
Joseph A. Ladapo
Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo is under consideration to lead HHS, ABC News first reported.
Like Kennedy, Ladapo is a vaccine skeptic.
Under his leadership, Florida skirted CDC pandemic guidelines regarding masks and social distancing, as well as vaccine requirements for children. In October 2022, he recommended that men between ages 18 and 39 avoid the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines because of a slightly increased risk for cardiac-related deaths. The study he referenced was widely criticized, and the FDA and CDC sent him a letter asking him to stop spreading disinformation.
Lapado was first appointed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2021.
After Trump’s win, Ladapo tweeted on Wednesday that the “future of health freedom in America looked brighter.”
“Just as in Florida, it’s time to say ‘No’ to trampling on people’s rights, to gaslighting citizens about experimental vaccines that harm instead of help & to muzzling doctors who dissent with orthodoxy. Light triumphs over darkness,” he said.
Roger Severino
Roger Severino, the former director of the HHS Office of Civil Rights under Trump and current vice president of domestic policy at the Heritage Foundation, wrote the HHS portion of Project 2025.
Severino is one of the most vocal abortion opponents in the GOP. He has repeatedly said that the government should not treat abortion as health care and calls for reversing approval of medication abortion, codifying the Hyde amendment and removing the morning-after pill from the contraceptive mandate.
In Project 2025 he also encourages the NIH to stop promoting “junk gender science” and redefine the definition of sex so it does not include gender identity, among other things.
Brian Blase
Brian Blase, a former Trump special assistant to the president for economic policy at the White House’s National Economic Council and currently the president of Paragon Health Institute, could come back around for a second administration.
In his most recent email blast, Blase called Trump’s victory “an opportunity to build on the health care successes of his first term” — pointing mainly to policies that expanded the availability of short-term health plans, association health plans and price transparency.
During the Biden administration, Blase has been analyzing and promoting the expansion of health savings account plans. He has proposed providing lower-income exchange enrollees the option to receive a portion of their subsidy as a HSA deposit rather than a subsidy to the insurer.
He also argued against the Biden administration’s expansion of Medicaid during the COVID-19 public health emergency, and called for limiting the program’s scope to just the lowest-income and most vulnerable individuals.
Paul Mango
Mango, another former Trump administration official and an adviser at the Paragon Institute, served as HHS deputy chief of staff from 2019 through 2021 and served as HHS Secretary Alex Azar’s formal liaison to Operation Warp Speed. From 2018 to 2019, Mango served as chief of staff for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. His institutional knowledge of the department could be seen as an asset to an incoming Trump administration.
Eric Hargan
Another Trump administration alumni, Eric Hargan served as deputy HHS secretary under Trump and also as acting secretary. He also served on the board of Operation Warp Speed. Hargan oversaw the setup and launch of the pandemic-era Provider Relief Fund.
Hargan was also acting HHS deputy secretary under then-President George W. Bush.
These days he’s the founder and CEO of the Hargan Group, where he focuses on health care, government relations and public affairs.
Joe Grogan
Joe Grogan served as an assistant to Trump and director of his Domestic Policy Council. He also was a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force in the early days of the pandemic. But Grogan didn’t stay in the administration the entirety of the first term and resigned in May 2020 to join Verde Technologies.
During his time in the White House, Grogan worked closely on efforts to lower drug costs, ban surprise medical bills and expand COVID-19 testing. He’s been a vocal opponent of the Biden administration’s policies to have Medicare negotiate drug costs, saying it would lead to less pharmaceutical innovation, and has repeatedly called for FDA reform to speed up the drug review and approval process.
These days Grogan is also at Paragon Health Institute where he serves as chairman of the board.
Bobby Jindal
The former Louisiana governor is now chair of the Center for a Healthy America, a wing of the America First Policy Institute, a conservative think tank advising Trump. Jindal’s focus on health policy isn’t new: he served as HHS assistant secretary under George W. Bush. Over the last few years he’s called for changes to the health care exchanges, increased price transparency measures and advocated against single-payer health care.
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