When I spoke with her for this episode of the “First Opinion Podcast,” Donna Shalala was wearing a lovely broach with American flags. I complimented her on it, and she smiled, telling me that Bob Dole — the 1996 Republican candidate for president — gave it to her.
Though she is a long-time Democrat, having served as Health and Human Services secretary under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 2001, she spoke fondly of many Republicans she has worked with over the years, including Alex Azar, who was the second HHS secretary during President Trump’s first term; today, Shalala and Azar both teach at the University of Miami, sometimes together, and even share an office.
But she could find nothing good to say about current HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
On this episode of the podcast, Shalala and I discussed her career in public health and her frustration with what’s happening at HHS now. We spoke on Monday morning, after the reorganization of the department was announced but before “reduction in force” layoffs began Tuesday. Our conversation was based in part on a recent First Opinion essay she wrote arguing that the reorganization was “silly” and “confusing.”
When she learned that Trump intended to nominate Kennedy for HHS secretary, she said, “I was frightened to death because he was anti-vaccine and anti-science and it turns out to be anti-government at the same time. And that’s just a disaster for improving the health and safety of all of us.”
I asked her if she thought Kennedy would make it through the confirmation process. “I actually didn’t,” she said. “I just thought that there were going to be senators on both sides of the aisle that would recognize that an anti-science candidate for HHS is not what the American people expect.”
We discussed her disappointment in Sen. Bill Cassidy — a physician and the chair of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions committee — for voting to confirm Kennedy; how she worked with McDonald’s and Republicans on a massively successful campaign to increase childhood vaccination in the ’90s; her advice for HHS workers; and how to save money without gutting the department.
“If you just looked at the economics of this, vaccines are one of the few ways we save money in health care. We don’t save money when we have a scientific breakthrough necessarily. We don’t save money when we introduce a new medical device. But we do save money when we get all of our children and all of our seniors vaccinated,” she said.
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