Marilyn Tavenner, head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, will leave the agency in February and be succeeded in the interim by Principal Deputy Administrator Andrew Slavitt, the Huffington Post and other media outlets reported Friday.
The Huffington Post, which first published the news of the impending transition, says Slavitt will take leadership of the agency ahead of a March Supreme Court hearing on a challenge to the Affordable Care Act’s provision to give tax credit subsidies to citizens with health insurance under ACA.
Slavitt is a former executive of UnitedHealth‘s Optum business, one of the contractors that built the Healthcare.gov website, according to the report by Jonathan Cohn and Jeffrey Young.
Tavenner will depart the agency almost six months after former Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius resigned from government.
