2001.03.30:Florida Health Official Named HCFA Deputy Administrator

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, March 30, 2001

Contact:

HHS Press Office
(202) 690-6343

FLORIDA HEALTH OFFICIAL NAMED HCFA DEPUTY ADMINISTRATOR

HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson today named Ruben Jose King-Shaw Jr. to serve as deputy administrator of the Health Care Financing Administration. King-Shaw has been secretary of Florida's Agency for Health Care Administration since 1998. As deputy administrator of HCFA, he would help lead the agency responsible for managing Medicare and Medicaid, two of the largest federal programs.

"Ruben has the ideal qualifications to provide leadership at a crucial time in HCFA's history," Secretary Thompson said. "At the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration, he has had broad experience in managing a full range of health care programs, in a state that reflects the same kind of diversity and challenges that confront our health care system on the national scale. He will function as chief operating officer at HCFA, and we will look to his management leadership to build on HCFA's strengths, ensure its responsiveness to beneficiaries and stakeholders, and enable it to perform the very difficult tasks that face it every day with the excellence that taxpayers deserve."

King-Shaw will serve with Thomas A. Scully, who was nominated by President Bush last week to be HCFA administrator. Scully's nomination requires Senate confirmation.

At the Agency for Health Care Administration, King-Shaw was responsible for Florida's Medicaid program and for its State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), in addition to managing health licensure and other state health functions. From 1995 to 1998, he served as chief operating officer and senior vice president of the Neighborhood Health Partnership, a health services and managed care company operating in Dade, Broward and Palm Beach Counties, Orlando and Tampa.

Medicare, the federal program serving 40 million elderly and disabled Americans, is the largest health insurer in the U.S. Its coverage policies and decisions generally serve as foundation for other American health insurors. Medicaid is a joint federal-state program, serving 41 million low-income individuals. Each state administers its own Medicaid program under regulations issued by HCFA, with the federal government matching state expenditures. HCFA also oversees SCHIP programs, created in 1997 to help expand health insurance coverage to uninsured children.

King-Shaw, 39, currently lives with his wife Patricia and their daughters, Alexandra and Angelica, in Tallahassee.

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