Report: Medicare chief set to resign

Officials warn about Medicare fraud

New Medicare plan confuses many


Sept. 3, 2006, 8:52PM
Medicare chief expected to leave Bush administration
McClellan was responsible for the launch of the new prescription drug program


By CHRISTOPHER LEE
Washington Post

WASHINGTON - The overseer of two of the nation's largest public health insurance programs is expected to resign from his Bush administration post as soon as this week, according to a Texas newspaper report.

Mark McClellan, 43, the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, plans to return to academia or the private sector after having served in three key health policy posts since President Bush took office in 2001, the Dallas Morning News reported in Sunday's editions.

Agency spokesman Jeff Nelligan said Sunday that he could not confirm that McClellan, a Texan, would resign soon. White House spokesman David Almacy also said he could not confirm the report.

"We haven't made any formal announcements about any personnel changes, so I don't have anything on the record for you," Almacy said. "If he's going to make an announcement, I guess we're going to have to wait and see."

A physician and health economist, McClellan served as commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration from 2002 to 2004. Before that, he was a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers and a senior health policy aide to Bush. McClellan succeeded Thomas Scully as CMS chief in March 2004.

At the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a branch of the Department of Health and Human Services, McClellan has overseen two federal programs that together provide more than $535 billion a year in benefits. Medicare provides health insurance for more than 42 million elderly and disabled people, and Medicaid pays for health and long-term care for more than 44 million Americans.

His tenure included overseeing the complex implementation of the new Medicare prescription drug benefit, which for the first time this year will help more than 33 million seniors pay for their prescription drug medications.

The benefit, passed by Congress after a contentious debate in 2003, is expected to cost the government $720 billion in the first 10 years.

The program began enrolling seniors for the first time this year, sometimes amid confusion about how to select the most appropriate coverage from the many plans offered by private insurers. Recent polls have found a large majority of beneficiaries are satisfied with the plan they picked, but about 20 percent said they had encountered a major problem in using the benefit.

John Rother, policy director for the AARP, the nation's largest organization for seniors, said he did not know McClellan's plans but "a lot of people who know him thought that this would be a good year for him to move on."

McClellan, who also worked on health policy issues in President Clinton's Treasury Department, generally has been viewed as a skilled implementer of policy rather than as a partisan ideologue.

He has developed solid working relationships with lawmakers of both parties in Congress.

McClellan became FDA commissioner in 2002 after the position had been vacant for nearly two years.

McClellan is the older brother of former White House press secretary Scott McClellan, who stepped down from that post in May. Their mother is Texas Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn, a Republican who is running for governor as an independent.