HHS In transition
Chris Klomp
HHS Deputy Secretary nominee; CMS Deputy Administrator and Director of the Center for Medicare
Health-tech executive (former CEO of Collective Medical) who runs Medicare day-to-day as CMS Deputy Administrator and Center for Medicare director, serves as HHS chief counselor, and was advanced by the Senate Finance Committee in September 2026 as nominee for HHS Deputy Secretary.
Role status — October 2026: Klomp directs the Center for Medicare (sworn in April 21, 2025) and serves as a CMS deputy administrator. In February 2026, Secretary Kennedy appointed him HHS chief counselor, overseeing department operations. President Trump has nominated him for HHS Deputy Secretary — the department’s No. 2 job, vacant since Jim O’Neill’s February departure. The Senate Finance Committee advanced his nomination 15–12 on September 24, 2026; a full Senate vote is pending.
Klomp came up through Bain & Company and Bain Capital before becoming CEO of Collective Medical (2014–2020), a health-data-sharing company that worked with hospitals on care coordination; he advised the first Trump administration on loosening restrictions on patient-data sharing. He has since served on the boards of Maven Clinic and Nomi Health. He is a BYU graduate and Stanford Graduate School of Business alumnus.
At Medicare he has pursued aggressive cost-saving and payment-accuracy measures: criticizing the risk-adjustment system as overvaluing large insurers, negotiating directly with insurer and pharma CEOs (including on TrumpRx drug pricing), and finalizing the 2027 Medicare Advantage payment rule (+2.48%, ~$13B) with the exclusion of diagnoses from unlinked chart reviews — “We will not reward risk coding games or rev cycle games” (his words, April 2026). The Washington Post describes his reputation inside the administration as a “behind-the-scenes fixer.”
Why he matters to this chronicle: Klomp is arguably the most operationally powerful person in Kennedy’s HHS below the secretary — running Medicare’s payment machinery while also directing department operations — and, if confirmed as deputy secretary, becomes the formal No. 2 for the entire MAHA program.
Sources (Oct 2026): Wikipedia (Chris Klomp) for career history; Becker’s Hospital Review on the Finance Committee vote and roles; STAT on the committee advancement; Becker’s Payer Issues on the 2027 MA rate rule; Modern Healthcare on the deputy-secretary nomination.