Andrew M. Slavitt (born 1966) is an American businessman and healthcare advisor who served as the acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services from March 2015 to January 2017 and as a temporary Senior Advisor to the COVID-19 Response Coordinator in the Biden administration. A leader of the team that helped to repair the healthcare.gov website after its initial rollout, he was nominated by Barack Obama to run CMS in July 2015. In January 2021, Slavitt accepted a temporary role as Senior Pandemic Advisor to President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 pandemic response team. He stepped down from that role in June 2021.
Early life and education
Slavitt is the son of Earl Benton Slavitt, a Chicago attorney. He is a graduate of both The College of Arts and Sciences and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 1988. He earned an MBA from the Harvard Business School in 1993.
Career
Slavitt's career was initially in investment banking at Goldman Sachs. After receiving his MBA, he joined McKinsey & Company as a consultant. In 1999, Slavitt founded the healthcare company HealthAllies after the death of his college roommate, Jeff Yurkofsky, from a malignant brain tumor. Slavitt later recounted that the financial strain of Yurkofsky's death led to Yurkofsky's widow and children moving into a spare room at his home. He served as CEO of HealthAllies until 2003, when the company was acquired by UnitedHealth Group, whereafter he served as CEO of OptumInsight and the group executive vice president for Optum, both subsidiaries of UnitedHealth Group.
In February 2008, Optum, then named Ingenix, was the center of an investigation by New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo "into a scheme by health insurers to defraud consumers by manipulating reimbursement rates." On January 13, 2009, Ingenix announced an agreement with the New York State attorney settling the probe into the independence of the health pricing database. Under the settlement, UnitedHealth Group and Ingenix would pay $50 million. On January 15, 2009, UnitedHealth Group announced a $350 million settlement of three class action lawsuits filed in federal court by the American Medical Association, UnitedHealth Group members, healthcare providers, and state medical societies for not paying out-of-network benefits.
Healthcare.gov
The Obama administration hired UnitedHealth Group's Optum unit, of which Slavitt was an EVP, to lead turnaround efforts for healthcare.gov after a series of technical issues reduced stability and service during the portal's 2013 launch. In November 2013, Slavitt appeared before Congress to address the healthcare.gov turnaround at a hearing of the United States House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce.
A February 2014 issue of Time called Slavitt's team “Obama’s Trauma Team”. CMS administrators credited his leadership with allowing the Obama administration to reach a self-imposed goal of providing fully functional Healthcare.gov service by December 1, 2013. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Marilyn Tavenner described Slavitt as a “key part of our leadership team to help millions of Americans get affordable health insurance in a whole new way.”
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
Principal Deputy Administrator
Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell announced Slavitt's appointment as Principal Deputy Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on June 20, 2014.
Acting Administrator
Slavitt became Acting CMS Administrator on March 18, 2015. He was succeeded as Principal Deputy CMS Administrator by Patrick Conway. In April 2015, Slavitt told a Brookings Institution panel that his priorities would include increasing the quality and reach of medical services in rural and underserved urban areas. He also held roles on the Obama administration's Heroin Task Force and served as a member of Vice President Joe Biden’s Cancer Moonshot task force. Slavitt remained charged with implementation of the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare") within the Obama administration throughout his tenure at CMS, and regularly provided testimony before Congress on the administration's ACA implementation.
In July 2015, Obama formally nominated Slavitt to run CMS.
Affordable Care Act "Town Hall Challenge" On January 23, 2017, Politico reported that Slavitt would focus his post-Obama administration efforts on defending the ACA from Congressional Republicans' efforts to repeal it.