[Bill]

https://nypost.com/2021/01/19/joe-bi...lth-secretary/

Rachel Levine tapped for health post, could be first openly transgender fed official

By Yaron Steinbuch

January 19, 2021 | 8:08am | Updated


As his nominee for assistant secretary of health, President-elect Joe Biden has tapped Pennsylvania Health Secretary Rachel Levine — who’d be the first openly transgender federal official to be confirmed by the US Senate.

“Dr. Rachel Levine will bring the steady leadership and essential expertise we need to get people through this pandemic — no matter their zip code, race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability — and meet the public health needs of our country in this critical moment and beyond,” Biden said in a statement.

“She is a historic and deeply qualified choice to help lead our administration’s health efforts,” he added about the pediatrician and former Pennsylvania physician general.

Levine faced criticism over the impact of the pandemic on nursing homes amid interim guidance from the state Health Department in March, 2020 that required them to readmit “stable patients who have had the COVID-19 virus,” Penn Live reported.

“Our secretary of health, Dr. Levine, decided that it would be good to allow COVID-positive patients to be returned to elder-care facilities,” state Sen. Doug Mastriano said in May of 2020, during a rally calling for her to resign.

“And as a result of that, it broke out like fire,” he said, calling it “unconscionable, unacceptable” and adding that Levine “needs to be held accountable for that awful decision.”

Levine also drew criticism in May, 2020 as the state’s health secretary, when she removed her 95-year-old mother from a personal care home during a surge of cases in nursing homes, according to Penn Live.

A Health Department spokeswoman, who declined to name the facility, said Levine and her children were notified of residents who tested positive and lived near the personal care home.

Levine noted that her mother was in a personal care home, not a nursing home, and that the facility was under the jurisdiction of the state Department of Human Services, not her own agency, the news outlet reported at the time.

A graduate of Harvard and of Tulane Medical School, Levine is president of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.

She was appointed to her current post by Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf in 2017, making her one of the few transgender people serving in elected or appointed positions in the US.

She won past confirmation by the GOP-majority Pennsylvania Senate and has emerged as the public face of the state’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Levine joins Biden’s Health and Human Services secretary nominee Xavier Becerra, a Latino politician who served as California’s attorney general.

And hey, gentlemen of the VB....she's single and ready to mingle!