The Trump administration today nominated Alex Azar, who spent nearly 10 years at Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) after working in the second Bush administration, as secretary of the U.S. Health & Human Services Dept.
The former HHS head, Dr. Tom Price, resigned in September after days of fending off criticism over chartered flights he took on the public dime. Price racked up roughly $1 million in private and government air travel in just seven months, according to Politico.
“It’s a great pick for where the agency is right now,” Lanhee Chen, who worked with Azar on Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, told the website. “I don’t think anybody can question his credentials from an experience perspective.”
“As both a former HHS deputy secretary and general counsel, together with his private-sector experience, Alex Azar has the knowledge, expertise, and leadership to oversee our Nation’s health response,” added AIDS Institute deputy executive director Carl Schmid.
Democrats, however, questioned Azar’s ability to distance himself from the pharma industry.
“All these drug corporations are jacking up prices because Washington isn’t doing its job to oversee them, and so I have great concerns,” Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) told Politico. “I’ll look at it when it officially comes to us, but I’m very disquieted.”
“They’ve also said they’re going to drain the swamp and crack down on Wall Street,” added Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.). “You’ve got the rhetoric. Let’s see what the reality is.”
“I would hope people would evaluate him based on the entirety of his career,” Chen told the website. “It’s politics, so you can imagine how people might use his background against him. But I hope that they don’t.”
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