Check out the website: https://lenspoliticalnotes.com Look at the recent Political Notes and Len’s Letters on the website. Political Note #337 Biden’s Covid-19 Task Force, Political Note #344 Joe Biden’s Domestic Economy
Political Note #345 Joe Biden and the public’s health
2020 General election – Getting ready to govern
Joe Biden told us that dealing with the coronavirus was the single most urgent issue. He announced his Covid transition team before he announced any of the other transition teams. He was, however, a little slower in announcing the officials he was appointing or nominating who would deal with our health. His nomination for Secretary of Health and Human Services was a surprise — different from the knowledgeable and professional insiders he has nominated. He nominated a lawyer not a doctor — someone whose connection with the health professions (other than his wife, a doctor) has been the lawsuits he has been wielding. As Attorney General of California, Xavier Becerra has taken the lead in protecting the Affordable Care Act.
Secretary of Health and Human Services
Xavier Becerra
Xavier Becerra is the Attorney General of California. His success has been a product of hard work and diligence, intelligence, good fortune, good relations with a variety of people, faith, and good stories.
Xavier Becerra’s mother’s name is Maria Theresa. Really. He grew up in (the news story says a one room, could that be?) an apartment in Sacramento, with his Mexican-born mother, his American born but Mexican raised father, and three younger sisters. Here’s a story about faith and family and story-telling. When he was eight, impatient to get to church, he left his mother and three sisters and walked seven blocks on his own to get to church for an earlier mass. After telling that story acknowledges he was in a hurry to get home for a football game.
Growing up, he worked with his father doing heavy labor and worked even more diligently in school. Was he clear about his post high school ambitions? His story is that a friend, after botching an exam, was about to throw away the application he had just received from Stanford. Xavier Becerra took it instead and applied. And got in. BA Stanford, JD Stanford. A good student.
How did he wind up, coming right out of Stanford Law School, working for the Central Massachusetts office of the Legal Assistance Corporation? He followed his wife to Harvard Medical School. He was not plotting a path of clerkships to influence or wealth.
Xavier Becerra says he imagined serving as an aide to elected officials, not running for office. Back in California, he worked as an aide for a state senator, then as a Deputy Attorney General. Playing golf (That he learned to play golf studying it in the library is another story) with people who could make such a request, he was asked to run for the State Assembly. After one term in the Assembly, he was one of many candidates for an open Congressional Seat. He got the Democratic nomination (in California’s old, conventional system) with less than 35% of the vote. He went on to win and stay. He was Chair of the Hispanic Caucus and in his last two terms, Chair of the House Democratic caucus. He advocated for Hispanic causes including DACA, opposed reductions in social security and Medicare, and received 100% ratings from Planned Parenthood and NARAL. He’s had minor scandals, but it wouldn’t be a shock if Joe Biden were to describe him as clean and articulate.
While in office, Xavier Becerra developed other ambitions. Not all of them worked out. He ran for Mayor of Los Angeles in 2001, but only received 6% of the vote in the primary. He was offered the position of US Trade Representative by President Obama, but declined. He was appointed California’s Attorney General by Governor Jerry Brown, to replace Kamala Harris when she was elected to the US Senate.
As Attorney General, Xavier Becerra’s involvement in health matters included felony charges against an anti-abortion group for secretly recording Planned Parenthood activities and leading the effort among state Attorneys General to defend the Affordable Care Act. As Secretary of Health and Human Services, we will find that he knows something about defending the public’s health.
Coordinator of the Covid-19 Response and Counselor to the President
Jeffrey Zients
If dealing with the Coronavirus pandemic is Joe Biden’s most urgent goal, his appointment of Jeffrey Zients is one of his most important. The Senate does not approve this appointment. Jeffrey Zients just goes to work. One of his first challenges is getting access to what the Trump administration is actually doing or not doing. It is just possible that the Trump administration has done little planning for the distribution of the vaccines, for instance.
Jeffrey Zients (rhymes with science) is a corporate guy. He is also a Washington guy. He’s Jewish; he grew up in Kensington, Maryland and went to St. Albans school in Washington. This is a school with alumni named Rockefeller and Roosevelt, Lodge, Kennedy and Bayh, David Ignatius and Britt Hume. Jeffrey Zients went on to Duke and to Bain. Bain is not exactly a graduate school, but think of it as having a role like graduate school. Jeffrey Zients even met his wife there. She was his boss. A South African, they married there with Nelson Mandela in attendance.
Jeffrey Zients went from Bain to the holding company for the Advisory Board Company, consultants for the improvement of health care organizations. He became COO, CEO, and then Chair. He and the company founder took the company public and Jeffrey Zients, still in his 30s, became a very wealthy man. He followed up by creating an investment firm of his own with a variety of interests, including health care.
In 2009, Jeffrey Zients left the private sector and went to work for President Barack Obama as Chief Performance Officer and Deputy Director of the OMB. He headed efforts to improve government efficiency and technology and led the President’s Job Council. In 2013, he responded to a crisis. He coordinated the effort to fix the failed Affordable Care Act website. The website and the system for consumers to find health insurance working, Jeffrey Zients became head of the National Economic Council and the President’s chief economic advisor in 2014.
Jeffrey Zients has been described as responding to directives from President Obama: “Get this fixed.” He’ll get the same directive from President Joe Biden.
Surgeon Genera
Vivek Murthy
Google the 8 uniformed services of the United States, you’ll get a Department of Defense website that lists 7: the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, the National Guard, the Space Force (Donald Trump’s brainchild), and the Coast Guard (even though that organization is under the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security).
The eighth uniformed service is the US Public Health Service Commissioned Corp. It began in 1798 with marine hospitals, consolidated in 1870 as the Marine Hospital Service headed by a position created to be the Surgeon General, and was further consolidated in 1944. Under the jurisdiction of the Health and Human Services Department, the Health Service Corp has 6,000 uniformed officers including the Surgeon General. HHS describes the role as the Nation’s Doctor. The Surgeon General provides us with information about maintaining and improving our health.
That description would make the Surgeon General a major figure for communications about health. Vivek Murthy has done this before – serving as Surgeon General from 2013 to 2017, appointed by Barack Obama and confirmed by the US Senate by a 51-43 vote, the negative votes were largely in response to his previous criticisms of the NRA.
Vivek Murthy is an immigrant to the United States from the United Kingdom. He was born in Yorkshire to immigrants from India who, a few years later, relocated to Miami to practice medicine. A high school valedictorian, he went to Harvard for his BA, to Yale for an MD and an MBA. As an undergraduate he founded a non-profit focused on HIV/AIDS education in the US and India. He completed his residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, then taught there and at Harvard Medical School. He founded a group called Doctors for America committed to affordable medical care for all as well as other non-profit and for-profit medical organizations. These entrepreneurial activities preceded his first appointment as Surgeon General.
Director, Center for Disease Control (CDC)
Rochelle Walensky
Rochelle Walensky has been on the faculty of the Harvard Medical School since 2001. She chaired the AIDS research advisory group for NIH and is an expert in that field. In the discussion about how to best deal with Covid-19, she supports focused protection on vulnerable groups and greater freedom from quarantines and other methods costly to society. Lockdowns, she says, should be a last resort, but mitigation strategies such as masks are essential. A recent paper states the efficacy of vaccines depends on the speed with which vaccines can be produced and distributed, people’s willingness to be vaccinated, and the severity of the pandemic when vaccines are introduced.
Rochelle Walensky is originally from Peabody and now lives in Newton, MA. Her BA is from Washington University of St. Louis; her MD from Johns Hopkins. She also has an MPH from Harvard.
Director, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
Anthony Fauci
Last on this list, moderately high on the national pecking order of health officials, Anthony Fauci is Joe Biden’s most important retention for obtaining the public’s confidence and support for dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic. Born and raised in Brooklyn, Anthony Fauci went to Regis High School on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, got his BA from Holy Cross and his MD from Cornell. He has been director of the Institute since 1984.
Anthony Fauci had developed therapies for formerly fatal diseases earning him recognition from the American Rheumatism Association. He was a leading figure in the study of HIV/AIDS, was attacked by AIDS activist Larry Kramer from whom Anthony Fauci eventually earned respect, both for his work and his willingness to reach out to the gay community. Serving on the White House Coronavirus Task Force, he spoke for the office of the president, while also contradicting President Trump. Attacked by loyalists to the President, he and his family have needed a security detail.
Some concluding thoughts
Joe Biden may have surprised advocates with his HHS Secretary nominee, but his devotion to relying on scientists is undiminished. In Vivek Murthy and Anthony Fauci, he has chosen doctors who have demonstrated their ability to speak to the public. In Rachel Walensky, he has chosen a doctor who knows how to speak to the medical community. In Xavier Becerra, he has chosen the California Attorney General who has demonstrated that he knows how to keep people who oppose science in line.
