The Backgrounds Of Biden’s Health Team

AP: Biden's Health Team Offers Glimpse Of His COVID-19 Strategy
President-elect Joe Biden’s choices for his health care team point to a stronger federal role in the nation’s COVID-19 strategy, restoration of a guiding stress on science and an emphasis on equitable distribution of vaccines and treatments. (Alonso-Zaldivar, 12/7)

NBC News: Biden Introducing Health Team As Trump Holds Covid Vaccine Summit
President-elect Joe Biden and President Donald Trump will hold dueling health care-related events Tuesday as the coronavirus pandemic continues to intensify nationwide. Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will formally introduce their nominees and appointees for their health team in the afternoon in Wilmington, Del. (Shabad, 12/7)

On the nominees to helm HHS and CDC —

Politico: Trump’s Health Nemesis Gets A New Starring Role: Reversing Trump’s Policies 
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra was the chief legal nemesis of the Department of Health and Human Services for most of the Trump presidency. Now the man who challenged President Donald Trump’s efforts to gut the Affordable Care Act, stop legal immigrants from using health programs, detain migrant children and curb access to abortion is President-elect Joe Biden’s pick to run the agency he antagonized. (Ollstein, 12/7)

Los Angeles Times: Republicans Raising Red Flags Over Becerra's HHS Nomination
Senate Republicans raised red flags Monday over President-elect Joe Biden’s plan to nominate California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra to be secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, although it is uncertain whether that could grow into enough opposition to scuttle the confirmation. (Haberkorn, 12/7)

AP: Becerra's Big Challenge: Vaccinating Americans Against Virus
In choosing Xavier Becerra to be his health secretary, President-elect Joe Biden tapped a robust defender of the Affordable Care Act who will face questions about whether he possesses the health care and management experience needed to lead the massive effort to vaccinate a nation against a deadly pandemic. As California’s attorney general, Becerra leads the nation’s largest state justice department, an influential perch from which he’s fought Republican efforts to roll back health coverage. But he has been less involved in the day-to-day work to combat the coronavirus, is not a health care expert and has not overseen an office as sprawling as the Department of Health and Human Services. (Lemire, Mascaro, Alonso-Zaldivar and Ronayne, 12/8)

Stat: Biden's CDC Pick, A Savvy Communicator, To Lead An Agency That Fell Quiet
When Rochelle Walensky, head of infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital, walks into the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on her first day, she will be taking over the famed public health agency at a time when its reputation has been battered and the morale of its staff is at a low ebb. (Branswell, 12/7)

The Washington Post: Biden’s Choice To Run CDC Is A Respected Specialist Who Is Unafraid To Speak Her Mind
President-elect Joe Biden’s choice to run the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is a widely respected infectious-diseases specialist regarded as a strong communicator unafraid to speak her mind, qualities critical to returning the beleaguered public health agency to its traditional front-line role and to bringing the coronavirus pandemic under control. But while Rochelle Walensky’s research has long had a public health focus, she has never run a government agency or organization as large and complex as the CDC. (Sun, 12/7)

Also —

Stat: 3 Reasons The Drug Industry Should Worry About Biden’s HHS Pick, Becerra
For a pharmaceutical industry that has spent two years sparring with health secretary Alex Azar, a former Eli Lilly executive fixated on the issue of high drug prices, President-elect Biden’s pick for the role, Xavier Becerra, may seem like incredible news. In his health policy work, Becerra has focused far more on Obamacare and health disparities than on the high price of medicines. (Florko, 12/8)

Modern Healthcare: HHS Role Gives Xavier Becerra New Tools To Challenge Healthcare Consolidation
As California's top watchdog, Xavier Becerra has sought to revive competition in healthcare using lawsuits. As HHS chief, he'd have a new go-to: regulation. HHS is a massive $1 trillion-plus department that contains key federal functions like Medicare and Medicaid, drug regulation and public health. While it doesn't handle antitrust issues—the main thrust of Becerra's current role as California's attorney general—some experts say he'll still be able to affect broad change from his new post, if confirmed. (Bannow and Cohrs, 12/7)

KHN: Xavier Becerra In His Own Words: ‘Health Care Is A Right’ 
President-elect Joe Biden has tapped California Attorney General Xavier Becerra to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Becerra, who would be the nation’s first Latino HHS secretary, has taken some ground-breaking positions on health care, especially since he became attorney general in 2017. He has sued the Trump administration dozens of times on health care, birth control, immigration, climate change and more, with California leading the defense of the Affordable Care Act before the U.S. Supreme Court. Becerra has also won a major legal settlement from Sutter Health after accusing the nonprofit health care giant of using its market dominance in Northern California to illegally drive up prices. (12/7)

Stat: Biden Health Picks Signal A Bottom-Up Approach To The Covid-19 Pandemic
President-elect Biden’s pandemic-response strategy took clearer shape this week with the rollout of several surprising appointments — a list that underscores that his Covid-19 response will be led far more by career government scientists and lower-level health agency deputies than has been the case during the Trump administration. (Facher, 12/8)