By Michael Erman and Patrick Wingrove
(Reuters) – As President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team vets candidates for key healthcare positions, pharmaceutical industry sources said the following people are possible appointees:
DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES SECRETARY
Ben Carson – Carson, 73, served as Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development during Trump’s first term after losing out to Trump as the Republican presidential nominee in 2016. Before politics, Carson was a neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. Carson is chairman of The American Cornerstone Institute, a conservative think tank he founded in 2021.
Eric Hargan – Formerly deputy secretary and acting secretary for HHS under Trump, Hargan, 56, is a senior lecturer at the University of Minnesota. He also sits on the boards of various healthcare companies. Hargan previously worked as a lawyer in firms including Greenberg Traurig and McDermott Will & Emery, and held various health agency roles under President George W. Bush.
Bobby Jindal – Governor of Louisiana from 2008 to 2016, Jindal, 53, is chair of the Center for a Healthy America at conservative think tank The America First Policy Institute. Jindal ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016 and served in the House of Representatives from 2005 to 2008. He studied health policy at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar in 1994. He moved to investment firm Ares Management in 2017.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – Kennedy, 70, is an environmental lawyer and anti-vaccine activist who ran an independent presidential campaign in 2024 before dropping out and endorsing Trump. Kennedy, a member of the famed political family, has pledged to end the FDA’s “war on public health.” He says the agency has suppressed among other things psychedelics, peptides, stem cells, raw milk, clean foods, sunshine, exercise, and “anything else that advances human health and can’t be patented by Pharma.” Reuters has reported he is reviewing candidate resumes for the health agencies.
Seema Verma – Verma, 54, ran the federal government’s Medicare and Medicaid programs during Trump’s first administration. She is a senior executive at Oracle’s health and life sciences unit on its clinical and clinical trials applications portfolio. Verma was a healthcare consultant who worked with former Vice President Mike Pence – then Indiana’s governor – on the state’s Medicaid program until 2017.Â
DIRECTOR OF THE FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION
Marty Makary – Makary is a physician at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore who raised concerns about a number of public health issues during the COVID-19 pandemic. He touted the protection received from natural immunity and opposed COVID vaccine mandates. Makary is also an adviser at the Washington conservative healthcare think tank Paragon Health Institute.Â
Casey Means – Means, 37, is a physician and adviser to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who is pushing for an overhaul of the U.S. health and food systems. Means is a co-founder of the health tech company Levels, which connects an app to continuous glucose monitors.
CENTERS FOR MEDICARE AND MEDICAID SERVICES ADMINISTRATOR
Michael Burgess – Burgess, 73, is a former obstetrician gynecologist whose 20 years as a Texas Republican congressman is set to end this year. He has chaired the Health Care Task Force on the House’s Budget Committee and served in the Health, Energy, and Oversight and Investigations subcommittees of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. Burgess said if Trump wanted him to take on the role, he would.
Joe Grogan – Grogan, 52, served as assistant and Director of the Domestic Policy Council in Trump’s first administration, and was a member of the White House’s COVID-19 task force. He chairs the board of the Paragon Health institute.
Brad Smith – Smith served as deputy administrator of CMS as well as director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation during the first Trump administration. He has since founded and served as CEO of Nashville healthcare investment firm Russell Street Ventures.Â
Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for the Trump-Vance transition team, said decisions on who will serve in Trump’s second administration will be announced when they are made.
The other potential candidates did not respond to requests for comment.
(Reporting by Michael Erman and Patrick Wingrove in New York and Stephanie Kelly in Washington; editing by Caroline Humer and Bill Berkrot)
