By Sarah Owermohle, CNN
(CNN) — President Donald Trump on Thursday named Medicare director and former health care executive Chris Klomp to be deputy secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services.
The deputy secretary oversees operations and regulatory policy. The move would make Klomp second in command behind HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom he has been closely advising for several months.
“HHS is a massive and complex organization, but Chris knows exactly how to run it,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. He added that he, Kennedy and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz “made this decision together!”
Klomp would need to be confirmed by the Senate as deputy secretary, adding his name to a list of federal health nominees awaiting hearings before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
HHS has been without a deputy secretary since Jim O’Neill left in February as part of a broader shakeup in agency leadership, partly in an effort to refocus health care messaging around lower costs and the TrumpRx program, people familiar told CNN at the time.
That same month, Klomp, who had been serving as Medicare director since April 2025, was chosen to oversee HHS operations and advise Kennedy. As Medicare’s chief, Klomp became a fixture in the administration’s efforts to broker TrumpRx deals with pharmaceutical companies and build Trump’s most-favored nations plan to further cut prescription drug costs.
“Chris Klomp has been unbelievable, a real star,” Trump said during a White House event in April touting a deal with drugmaker Regeneron. “You don’t know his name as much as some of the others, but he’s a real star of the group.”
At HHS, Klomp led the searches this year for candidates to lead the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the surgeon general’s office. In April, Trump nominated public health veteran Dr. Erica Schwartz for CDC director and Fox News contributor Dr. Nicole Saphier for surgeon general; both await Senate confirmation hearings.
Klomp has also been closely involved in the search for a replacement for former US Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary, who stepped down in May.
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