1. Andrew M Slavitt was born on 1966 and is an American businessman and healthcare advisor who was 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.
In January 2021, Slavitt accepted a temporary role as Senior Pandemic Advisor to President Joe Biden's COVID-19 pandemic response team.
Andy Slavitt stepped down from that role in June 2021.
Andy Slavitt is the son of Earl Benton Andy Slavitt, a Chicago attorney.
Andy Slavitt is a graduate of both The College of Arts and Sciences and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 1988.
Andy Slavitt earned an MBA from the Harvard Business School in 1993.
Andy Slavitt's career was initially in investment banking at Goldman Sachs.
In 1999, Andy Slavitt founded the healthcare company HealthAllies after the death of his college roommate, Jeff Yurkofsky, from a malignant brain tumor.
Andy 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.
Andy Slavitt was CEO of HealthAllies until 2003, when the company was acquired by UnitedHealth Group, whereafter he was CEO of OptumInsight and the group executive vice president for Optum, both subsidiaries of UnitedHealth Group.
The Obama administration hired UnitedHealth Group's Optum unit, of which Andy Slavitt was an EVP, to lead turnaround efforts for healthcare.
In November 2013, Andy Slavitt appeared before Congress to address the healthcare.
Andy Slavitt was succeeded as Principal Deputy CMS Administrator by Patrick Conway.
Andy Slavitt held roles on the Obama administration's Heroin Task Force and was a member of Vice President Joe Biden's Cancer Moonshot task force.
Andy Slavitt remained charged with implementation of the Affordable Care Act 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 Andy Slavitt to run CMS.
On January 23,2017, Politico reported that Andy Slavitt would focus his post-Obama administration efforts on defending the ACA from Congressional Republicans' efforts to repeal it.
At the time, only eight legislators had held public meetings about the ACA, and Andy Slavitt challenged every Congressional Republican to meet with their constituents and explain their votes.
Andy Slavitt held 16 town-hall-style events to discuss healthcare policy and the ACA before a total audience of over 35,000 people.
Andy Slavitt took to social media to inform and energize hundreds of thousands more.
Andy Slavitt worked with any resistance group that reached out to him.
On February 25,2020, when COVID-19 infections began to appear across the United States, Andy Slavitt appeared as a guest on Hardball with Chris Matthews to question Trump administration claims that the Centers for Disease Control had adequately contained domestic spread of the virus.
Andy Slavitt praised CDC officials who contradicted official accounts of the federal government's early handling of COVID-19:.
Andy Slavitt contributed to the Trump administration's initial phased reopening plan, but criticized the White House for failing to follow its own recommendations.
Andy Slavitt criticized Trump's proposed decision to disband the White House Coronavirus Task Force while new infections were taking place.
Andy Slavitt's contact tracing plan received praise during an April 2020 interview with PBS NewsHour.
In January 2021, it was announced that Andy Slavitt would be named a temporary senior advisory position on COVID-19 in the Biden administration.
Andy Slavitt received media attention for his nonpartisan approach, in particular for comments in March 2021 praising the Trump administration's vaccine development effort Operation Warp Speed.
At a May 2021 White House briefing, Andy Slavitt revealed that his teenage son Zach continued to suffer serious lingering medical effects from an earlier bout of COVID-19.
Andy Slavitt cited symptoms including tachycardia, shortness of breath, and flu-like symptoms while urging Americans with families to vaccinate their children aged 12 to 15 as soon as possible.
Andy Slavitt stepped down from his role on June 9,2021.
Former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb commended Andy Slavitt for "answering the call to service at a critical moment in public health".
On September 8,2020, Andy Slavitt announced that St Martin's Press would publish a book of his about the pandemic.
US Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said that the book "comes at a crucial moment as [Andy Slavitt] explains, in accessible and engaging terms, how we got here and what must happen next".
Andy Slavitt has been a subject of an antisemitic conspiracy theory claiming that he and other Jewish people are part of a cabal responsible for COVID and a "COVID agenda".