Fewer than 120 days are left before Inauguration Day, and both presidential candidates at this point have plausible paths to the White House. That means they are assembling transition teams that will be tasked with identifying priorities for 2017, populating Cabinet positions and working with the current administration to coordinate the handoff.
Neither camp has publicly floated names of the people likely to lead HHS and its component agencies, which include the CMS, the Food and Drug Administration, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health. Other key positions in the executive branch wield huge influence in the healthcare industry and healthcare services, too, including the attorney general, the Federal Trade Commission chairman and the secretary of Veterans Affairs.