Medicare Compliance & Reimbursement

It's official: Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Mark McClellan, MD, is President Bush's nominee to replace Tom Scully as head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the White House announced Feb. 20.

As CMS Administrator, McClellan, who is expected to be confirmed easily, will take on the huge responsibility of implementing the giant Medicare overhaul that Congress passed last year. The administration and congressional Republicans had hoped that the new law, which provides a prescription drug benefit for seniors, would negate the Democrats' traditional electoral advantage on health care issues. So far, however, the opposite appears to be happening: According to the Washington Times, a Gallup poll conducted between Jan. 19 and Feb. 1 found a 13 percentage-point jump, to 57 percent, in the number of Americans who disapprove of Bush's health care policies, as opposed to only 35 percent who say they approve.

McClellan moved over to FDA from Bush's White House Council of Economic Advisors in November 2002. Prior to that, he taught both medicine and economics at Stanford University.

The versatile 40-year old also served Bush's predecessor in the oval office, Bill Clinton, as deputy assistant secretary of the treasury for economic policy in 1998 and 1999. He was an architect of Clinton's Medicare prescription drug proposal and testified on its behalf on Capitol Hill.

FDA's Deputy Commissioner Lester Crawford, who was Acting Commissioner at the agency before McClellan's arrival, will reportedly resume that post until Bush succeeds in the Goldilocks-like quest for a permanent FDA chief who is acceptable -- but not too acceptable -- to industry. That could take some time: Before McClellan took over, FDA had been headless since Jane Henney, MD, left with the outgoing Clinton administration in January 2001.