US Medicare/Medicaid Administrator quits job

Marilyn Tavenner, the Administrator of the USA’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, who supervised the troubled rollout of the federal insurance marketplace, unexpectedly said on Friday that she was resigning, according to the New York Times and other US media sources. She will step down at the end of February.

Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, accepted the resignation in a statement filled with praise for Ms Tavenner. Ms Burwell said that Andrew Slavitt, the number two official at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, would become the acting Administrator. Mr Slavitt, who started work at the agency in July 2014, had been a top executive at Optum, a unit of UnitedHealth, one of the nation’s largest insurance companies. Optum helped build and operate the federal insurance exchange, and another unit of UnitedHealth sells health plans to consumers through the exchanges in 23 states.

Given the politics of health care, it may not be easy for US President Barak Obama to find a new Medicare chief who can win confirmation from the Republican-controlled Senate, said the NYT. The agency was without a Senate-confirmed administrator for nearly seven years before Ms Tavenner won approval in 2013.