Biden picks ObamaCare defender for health secretary

President-elect Joe Biden has picked California Attorney General Xavier Becerra to be his health secretary, putting a defender of the Affordable Care Act in a leading role to oversee his administration’s coronavirus response.

If confirmed by the Senate, Becerra (inset), 62, will be the first Latino to head the Department of Health and Human Services, a $1-trillion-plus agency with 80,000 employees and a portfolio that includes drugs and vaccines, medical research and health insurance programs covering more than 130 million Americans.

As California’s attorney general, Becerra has led the coalition of Democratic states defending “ObamaCare” from the Trump administration’s latest effort to overturn it, a legal case awaiting a Supreme Court decision next year. He jokingly became known in Democratic legal circles as the man who sued Trump more than anyone else.

A former senior House Democrat, Becerra helped steer the Obama health law through Congress in 2009 and 2010, saying one of his primary motivations was to aid the tens of thousands of uninsured people in his Southern California district.

Overseeing the coronavirus response will be the most complicated task Becerra has ever contemplated.

By next year, the US will be engaged in a mass vaccination campaign, the groundwork for which has been laid under the Trump administration.

The core components of HHS include the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. They are the boots on the ground of the government’s coronavirus response.