President Biden announced several senior appointments on Feb. 19 plans to the Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS), Education, and Veterans Affairs (VA), including Chiquita Brooks-LaSure as Administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
Brooks-LaSure currently works as managing director at Manatt and served previously as a policy official during the Obama Administration. She has over 20 years of experience in health policy, including serving as deputy director for policy at the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight within CMS, and as a director of coverage policy at HHS.
According to her bio, Brooks-LaSure played an instrumental role in guiding the Affordable Care Act through passage and implementation.
If confirmed by Senate, Brooks-LaSure will join a department that’s working on various IT initiatives to improve healthcare delivery, including making improvements on state-reported data available for overseeing Medicaid. A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report found that CMS needed to make improvements for Priority items and Analytics files, and CMS has made improvements from what GAO found in 2017.
Additionally, President Biden has tapped James Kvaal to serve as Under Secretary of Education, and Richard Sauber as General Counsel for VA.
