Player: Mandy Krauthamer Cohen.

Position: Acting director of the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight – the arm of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services that oversees U.S. Department of Health and Human Services efforts to implement the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Replacing: Gary Cohen (no relataion).

Why she's in the news: HHS tapped her to run CCIIO now that Gary Cohen has announced his intention to leave his post at the end of the month.

Former position:Senior advisor to the CMS administrator.

What else has she done at HHS and CMS?Worked as director of provider engagement at HHS, and also as director of stakeholder engagement at the CMS Innovation Center.

What she did at the CMS Innovation Center: Worked on developing new types of health care payment and delivery arrangements.

Education: Bachelor's degree in policy analysis and management, Cornell University, 2000. Master's degree in health administration, Harvard University School of Public Health, 2004. Medical degree, Yale University School of Medicine, 2005.

Public policy minor league experience:She started as a resident physician at Massachusetts General Hospital, a top teaching hospital in Boston, from 2005 through 2008, then was deputy director for comprehensive women's health services at the Department of Veterans Affairs from July 2008 through July 2009. From 2009 through 2011, she was executive director of the Doctors for America, a group that promoted the idea that any federal health reform proposal ought to include a government-run “public option” health insurance program for the uninsured.

Family: Her husband, Samuel Cohen, is a health care lawyer in the Washington office of Arent Fox. He helps clients with matters such as compliance with Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act regulations. Her mother is a nurse practitioner in the Northeast.

Words to live by: “There's a lot of uncompensated work going on, so there has to be a component that goes beyond just fee-for service… But you don't want a situation where doctors have to be the one to take on all the risk of taking care of a patient. Asking someone to take on financial risk in a small practice is very concerning.” – What Cohen told a National Journal reporter about physician reimbursement reform in 2009.

See also:

Instant Insights /

Player of the day: Mandy Krauthamer Cohen

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