WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Tom Scully, the head of U.S. Medicare and Medicaid services, said on Wednesday he was resigning, just a week after Congress passed a landmark bill he helped shape to provide a Medicare prescription drug benefit.
Scully, who has headed the agency since 2001, said he would step down on Dec. 15. In an interview, he said he was seeking health care-related law or investment work in the private sector but had no formal job offers.
Revelations Scully had spoken with potential suitors drew criticism he was shopping for an industry job while helping steer the Medicare bill through Congress.
Scully said his desire to leave and spend more time with his family "probably was the worst-kept secret in the universe."
"I'm happy I stuck around ... but I promised my wife and kids I would leave when the Medicare bill was done," he said.
Under Scully, the agency formerly known as the Health Care Financing Administration became the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. It oversees the government health insurance plans for the poor, elderly and disabled.
The $395 billion overhaul of the federal health plan for the elderly and disabled was considered a victory for President Bush (news - web sites).
"Tom Scully is leaving a different agency from the one he took over in 2001, an agency that has been re-energized by his leadership," Health and Human Services (news - web sites) Secretary Tommy Thompson said in a statement.
"He also made crucial contributions in the effort to bring about the president's vision of a modernized Medicare," Thompson said.
An acting administrator will be named by Dec. 15, HHS said.
ETHICAL QUESTIONS
Scully said he told Thompson last summer he wanted to leave the administration, but Thompson persuaded him to stay until the Medicare bill passed Congress.
The New York Times said Scully was the object of a bidding war among five firms seeking to hire him to advise clients affected by the Medicare reform measure.
The Medicare bill will affect pharmaceutical companies, insurers, hospitals and others in the health care field.
Some said Scully's contacts with private firms raised ethical questions.
"The key question to me is are the people who are meant to be representing the interests of consumers ... are they focusing 100 percent on the best interest of Medicare beneficiaries?" said Gail Shearer, director of health policy analysis at Consumers Union.
Scully, who has worked as a health care attorney and head of the Federation of American Hospitals, an industry group, said private firms had approached him about future employment. None "ever had an issue, a meeting, a topic, a discussion, or interest before me at all since last May ... the idea that they did is ridiculous," he said.
HHS ethics officials granted a waiver that allowed him to continue working on the Medicare bill even though he had talked with potential employers, Scully said.
The approach was "by the book. My general counsel tells me I was a model citizen," Scully said.
John Brennan, a health care attorney who said he had known Scully for years, said Scully had earned widespread respect, even from opponents, and was sought after partly because of his high visibility within the industry.
"I don't think there's anybody that is in the health care field that doesn't know at least who Tom Scully is," said Brennan, head of the health care group at Washington-based law firm Crowell and Moring, which interviewed Scully. He was no longer a candidate for a job at the firm, Brennan said.