Levine confirmed for post in health dept.
Toomey among senators who voted against Wolf ’s former health secretary
The U.S. Senate confirmed former Pennsylvania Health Secretary Rachel Levine as President Joe Biden’s assistant U.S. secretary of health Wednesday.
The final vote was 52-48. Sen.
Pat Toomey voted against Levine.
Levine, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf ’s former health secretary, demonstrated poor leadership in responding to the
COVID-19 pandemic and doesn’t deserve the promotion to help lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Republican from Lehigh County said before the vote.
“In Pennsylvania, the pandemic struck seniors in nursing homes disproportionately hard compared to other states. This was due in part to poor decisions and oversight by Dr. Levine and the Wolf administration,”
Toomey said in a statement. “Moreover, the commonwealth’s extended economic lockdown that Dr. Levine advocated for was excessive, arbitrary in nature, and has led to a slower recovery.”
Toomey added that while he appreciates Levine’s responsiveness to his office over the past year, he could not support her confirmation.
Toomey has voted for and against other Biden nominees. He voted against six Cabinet nominees so far, including Xavier Becerra as head health secretary and U.S. Rep. Marcia Fudge for secretary of the Department of Housing & Urban Development. He voted to confirm at least eight, including Antony Blinken as secretary of state and Janet Yellen as treasury secretary.
Biden picked Levine as his assistant health secretary Jan. 19, arguing that her “steady leadership and essential expertise” would enable the administration to help the country get past the pandemic.
Levine, the first openly transgender federal official to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate, is “a historic and deeply qualified choice to help lead our administration’s health efforts,” Biden said at the time.
“While today is certainly momentous, Dr. Levine is less interested in making history and more interested in making a difference,” the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center said in a statement in response to Levine’s confirmation. “Now, she can get to work to improve public health for the American people.”
Levine, a professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at the Penn State College of Medicine, graduated from Harvard College and the Tulane University School of Medicine, according to her profile on the state’s website. She’s written and lectured on the opioid crisis, medical marijuana, adolescent medicine, eating disorders and LGBT medicine.
She was appointed to her post by Wolf in 2017. For two years prior, she served as physician general of the commonwealth.
When the state announced its first confirmed case of COVID19 in March, she became the public face of the response. Some praised her for her cool and collected demeanor. She repeatedly said, “Stay calm, stay alert and stay safe.”
Levine “has been a wise, calm, and dedicated partner during this pandemic and I couldn’t be prouder of the tireless work she’s done to serve Pennsylvanians,” Wolf said in a statement following her federal nomination.
State Republicans have blamed Levine for the state’s high COVID death toll at nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, which account for more than half of the nearly 25,000 virus-linked fatalities in the state.
They also have questioned strict public health orders that forced businesses deemed “non-life-sustaining” to close for extended periods last year, and the administration’s haphazard process for deciding which businesses deserved exemptions.
Mitigation measures, including stay-at-home orders and shutdowns of public schools and many businesses, helped prevent a major surge and stopped the exponential growth in virus cases, Levine has argued.
Since Biden nominated her, Levine has been falsely accused of advocating for gender reassignment surgery for minors without parental consent. Her confirmation hearing got heated when Republican Sen. Rand Paul compared gender reassignment surgeries to “gender mutilation” and demanded to know whether she supported gender reassignment surgery and hormone therapy for minors.
She responded that transgender medicine is “a very complex and nuanced field with robust research and standards of care that have been developed,” and said she would discuss specifics if confirmed.
Other Republicans questioned Levine as to why data for COVID-19 cases and deaths was missing from public reports released weekly by the state Health Department.
Levine pointed to lags in the state’s electronic death reporting system to explain why case and death data appeared to be incomplete.
All 50 Democrats and independents in the Senate, including Pennsylvania’s Bob Casey, voted for Levine, as did two Republicans: Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine.
Originally from Massachusetts, Levine moved to central Pennsylvania from Manhattan in the early 1990s, according to a 2016 report from The Washington Post. She publicly announced herself as a transgender woman around 2010.
In 2015, Levine served as grand marshal of the Philadelphia Pride Parade. Then, in 2019, Levine was grand marshal of Lehigh Valley Pride.