Bush names McClellan CMS chief

By Mary Mosquera

Connecting state and local government leaders

| February 20, 2004

Mark McClellan was selected to be administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services at the Health and Human Services Department.<br>

President Bush tdoay named Mark McClellan to be the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services at the Health and Human Services Department.

McClellan will oversee implementing the new Medicare law, which expands prescription drug benefits for seniors. McClellan has been commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, also an agency of HHS, since November 2002. The Senate must confirm McClellan's appointment.

Tom Scully, the former CMS administrator, resigned in December. Lester Crawford, FDA's deputy commissioner, will be acting commissioner in McClellan's absence.

HHS secretary Tommy Thompson said McClellan's understanding of the U.S. health care system and experience in public service would benefit him in the new post.

McClellan is a physician and economist who previously served as a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers in 2001 and 2002. He is the brother of White House press secretary Scott McClellan.

Before coming to the White House, he worked at Stanford University as associate professor of economics, associate professor of medicine and director of the Program on Health Outcomes Research. He was also an attending physician for internal medicine at Stanford Health Services. On the economics side, he was a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

McClellan has studied measuring and improving the quality of health care, the economic and policy factors influencing medical treatment decisions and health outcomes and the effects of technology in health care.

McClellan earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Texas, master's degree from Harvard University, medical degree from Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology and doctorate in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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