Andy Slavitt: A Bipartisan Approach to Fighting the Pandemic




Commonwealth Club of California Podcast show

Summary: Andy Slavitt was brought in by the Obama administration to fix Healthcare.gov after a disastrous rollout and then asked to stay on to head Medicare and Medicaid. Since leaving government, he’s been one of the fiercest critics of the current administration’s efforts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act and combat COVID-19. Yet his approach to changing health care and fighting the pandemic has been deliberately bipartisan, and he informally advises leading Republicans as well as Democrats. Slavitt teamed with former FDA chief Scott Gottlieb to propose a $46.5 billion plan for COVID-19 contact tracing and isolation and was lead author of an open letter entitled “Stay Home, Save Lives” signed by 16 top Republican and Democratic figures. Listen to one of our country’s savviest health professionals discuss what’s next for fighting the pandemic in a bipartisan fashion.