Healthcare winners in 2014

It was a tumultuous year in healthcare, and several people and organizations burnished their reputations by showing competence where others failed.

Gilead CEO John Martin: Gilead's decision to price its hepatitis C drug Sovaldi at $84,000 per treatment delivered $8.5 billion in sales in the first nine months of the year. The company followed Sovaldi with a similarly priced hep C drug called Harvoni. The Harvard Business Review named Martin the top performing CEO in the world this year.
HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell: President Barack Obama chose Burwell to run HHS after the resignation of Kathleen Sebelius, who became irrevocably associated with the disastrous rollout of HealthCare.gov. Burwell came to the job with a reputation and record as an efficient manager. Year Two of the online insurance marketplace has been smooth.
About 10 million uninsured Americans: That's the latest estimate of how many of the nation's uninsured got coverage in 2014 through the new insurance marketplaces and Medicaid programs that expanded eligibility under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The uninsured rate had dropped to 12.4% in September from 17.5% a year earlier, according to the Urban Institute.
Hemsley
GOP Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky: McConnell won re-election and leadership of the next Senate, giving him greater power to roll back the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. In December, McConnell floated the possibility of writing comprehensive healthcare legislation if the U.S. Supreme Court spikes insurance subsidies for consumers who buy coverage through a federally run exchange.
Kindred Healthcare COO Ben Breier: Breier will soon assume the top leadership role from CEO Paul Diaz just as the post-acute giant gets even bigger after pulling off a hostile bid for Gentiva.
HCA CEO Milton Johnson: Johnson saw the hospital chain's profits jump 19% for the first nine months of 2014 compared with 2013. Executives attributed the results to tamed expenses and volume increases in service lines such as outpatient surgery and obstetrics.
Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert McDonald: McDonald won a $16 billion allocation from Congress to improve care for veterans. The former Procter & Gamble CEO was asked to take over the department after its own investigation corroborated allegations that VA hospitals were hiding long wait times by adding patients to secret lists.
Beshear
Covered California Executive Director Peter Lee: California's insurance exchange was one of the most successful state-run marketplaces in the inaugural year of Obamacare's insurance expansion, enrolling 1.1 million Californians in coverage.
Michael Cannon: The conservative healthcare policy expert and Obamacare critic is the brain behind the legal challenges that landed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act back on the Supreme Court's docket. Cannon, the director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute, argues that the statute calls for insurance subsidies only in state-run exchanges, an interpretation that would end subsidies for millions of Americans if the Supreme Court agrees.