May 13, 2026

Trump’s New Corporate Interest Healthcare Advisory Panel

Financial conflicts of interest are widespread among a new Trump Administration Healthcare Advisory Committee tasked with providing the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid advice on improving, strengthening and modernizing the U.S. healthcare system, a Public Citizen analysis found.

Nearly all the appointees hold senior leadership positions in health care organizations that are invested in making money off the U.S. health system, suggesting they may be more committed to serving the bottom lines of groups that profit from the U.S.’s broken health care framework than providing advice that will best serve the needs of American patients. Some are, or were in the past, involved in lobbying for health industry interests. None of the appointees are patient or consumer representatives.

Only a third of the committee (6/18) are medical doctors and two members are former nurses. Most of the medical professionals don’t appear to have much current involvement in direct patient care and instead serve in business and operational roles.

Many of the appointees to the new Healthcare Advisory Committee are politically connected to the Trump world or Republican party or have business relationships with the Trump family or Trump administration officials, indicating little diversity in political philosophy among the panel members and questions about the likelihood their appointments were in part a reward for political donations and favors, not their qualifications and expertise.

It is not clear whether this group meets the requirements for membership balance under the Federal Advisory Committee Act.

Despite spending the most per capita on health care, the U.S. consistently has lower life expectancy than our peers in comparably wealthy countries with universal health care. Profit-driven health care is not the way forward, but our overview of the panel’s backgrounds reveals they are likely to recommend more of the same failing strategies. They appear largely invested in health care as a money-making business, not a human right.

Highlights of Committee Members:

1. Robert Bressler, MD is the CEO of Honest Medical Group, an organization whose stated aim to is to improve patient health outcomes and reduce costs. The company was started in 2021 by three investors at Rubicon Founders including Trumps’ now CMS Innovation Center Director Abe Sutton. Sutton previously served in Trump’s first administration with stints on the President’s National Economic Council, as an advisor to the Secretary of HHS and policy advisor at the Domestic Policy Council. Honest Medical Group was also co-founded by Adam Boehler, who is currently a Trump special advisor for hostage response and Trump’s former CMMI head during his first term. Bressler has donated to the GOP’s WinRed Political Action Committee.
2. Kimberly Brandt, JD, (ex officio) is currently CMS’s deputy administrator and chief operating officer. She also served as a political official at CMS during the first Trump administration. She is currently under scrutiny from Democrats for her role in cutting off some of Minnesota’s Medicaid funding. Brandt has worked as a Republican staffer for the Senate Finance Committee and has a history of donating to Republican political candidates and groups. Brandt has also held work as a lobbyist including for many major drug companies like Amgen, AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, Merck, Novartis, Sanofi and more, along with medical device companies, and the drug industry trade group the Biotechnology Innovation Organization.
3. Sebastian Caliri, is a venture capitalist at 8VC. 8VC invests in a range of life science and health care companies such as Blink Health, a prescription drug platform whose board includes Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. Caliri, previously served as the commercial lead for healthcare for Palantir Technologies, an organization that is now infamous for helping with Trump’s cruel anti-immigrant agenda leading some S. health systems to cut ties with the company.
4. Stephanie Carlton, (ex officio) is the current CMS Chief of Staff and Deputy Administrator who previously worked on the S. Senate Finance Committee Republican staff as well as with other Republican members of Congress. She began her career as a labor and delivery nurse but has spent most of her career not providing patient care. She has donated to President Trump.
5. David Carmouche, MD, is chief medical and commercial officer at Lumeris, a health tech firm that helps health systems manage value-based care requirements through the use of artificial intelligence and other software tools. He came to Lumeris from Walmart where he served as senior VP of healthcare delivery including work on a virtual care partnership with United Healthcare’s Optum. Prior to Walmart he was executive VP at Oschner Health, a nonprofit academic health system and chief medical officer and executive VP of external operations at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana. He spent the first 15 years of his career as the medical director of the center for cardiovascular disease prevention, as an internal medicine doctor.  He has a history of donating to Republicans including
6. Elizabeth M. Fago, who worked in the nursing home business, has raised millions of dollars for President Trump. In 2025, Trump pardoned her son Paul Walczak, a former nursing home executive, who pleaded guilty to tax crimes, including using money withheld from employee paychecks that was supposed to go toward Social Security, Medicare and federal income tax, for personal purposes. Walczak took over the nursing home business from his mother.
7. Clive K. Fields, MD was the cofounder of VillageMd, a health care provider business focused on primary care. He has donated to many Republican office holders and PACs.
8. William J. Gassen, JD is the president and CEO of Sanford Health an $11 billion non-profit health system largely serving people in the upper Midwest. He is also the chair-elect of the American Hospital Association, which lobbies for non-profit hospitals, and will be AHA’s chair in 2027. Gassen also is on the board of the health care lobbying group Coalition to Strengthen America’s healthcare which represents both for-profit and not for profit health organizations. He’s on the board of Oscar Health, a for-profit health insurance and health tech company, that was co-founded by the brother of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. Kushner is also an investor in Oscar. Gassen also serves on the board of the Greater Sioux Falls Chamber of Commerce and Medical Alley, a network of more than 800 health care industry organizations that includes drug and medical device companies and health insurance companies among other. Gassen has contributed to Republican candidates for elected office and PACs.
9. Jenni Gudapati, PhD, is the president and co-founder of ai, a health tech company and the director for Boise State University’s Value-Based Healthcare program. She also founded and leads a health consulting company Amethyst Solutions. She began her career as a nurse. Gudapati said that Republican Sen. Mike Crapo supported her nomination to the advisory panel and she has publicly praised the Make America Healthy Again agenda.
10. Valerie D. Huhn is the director for the Missouri Department of Mental Health. She has spent most of her career working for Missouri state government in health and human services agencies.
11. Dennis Laraway is an executive VP and Chief Financial Officer at Cleveland Clinic. He has spent most of his career as a CFO for non-profit medical systems.
12. Dan Liljenquist, JD is the chief strategy officer at Intermountain Health. He is also the chair of the board for Civica Rx, a nonprofit generic drug company and chairman of the board at Graphite Health, a nonprofit health software company. Between 2009 and 2011 he served as a Republican in the Utah State Senate. He also ran for U.S. Senate as a Republican. When in state office, he sponsored a Medicaid reform law  that switched Utah’s Medicaid system to a managed care system, Liljequist has contributed to Republican politicians and PACs as well as the American Hospital Association PAC.
13. Andrew Lynch, PhD, has been Chief Strategy Officer at Acadia Healthcare since 2022, a for-profit behavioral health company that has faced a number of legal challenges in recent years including scrutiny for understaffing of the psychiatric hospitals it operates. In 2024 Acadia settled with the Justice Department for $19.85 million over allegations it billed for medically unnecessary care. Lynch is also the board chair elect of the National Association for Behavioral Healthcare, which lobbies for behavioral healthcare providers.  He has worked throughout the health system including for health insurance company Humana, and drug company Pfizer. He regularly contributes to Acadia’s PAC which historically gives the majority of its donations to Republicans.
14. Ursel J. McElroy, is the director of Ohio’s Department of Aging, appointed by Republican Governor Mike DeWine in 2019. She has spent most of her career in local and state government.
15. Kyu Rhee, MD is the CEO and president of the National Association of Community Health Centers, which lobbies on behalf of community health centers. He is also a medical advisory board member at Found Health a telehealth weight loss company, Prior to working at NACHC he was a senior vice president and Chief Medical Officer at Aetna, the insurance division of CVS Health. Before that he spent more than a decade as the chief health officer for IBM and served as chief public health officer of the Health Resources and Services Administration and as Director of the Office of Innovation and Program Coordination at NIH. He has served as advisor to many companies in the health space.
16. Tony Robbins is a motivational speaker and life coach who profits from expensive and unproven supplements as well as digital and in person health and health-adjacent programs and a streaming TV network, among other ventures. Robbins reportedly was approached by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be Kennedy’s running mate for his 2024 Presidential bid.
17. Russ Thomas, JD is the CEO of Availity, a health tech company that helps payers, providers and insurance companies exchange information.
18. Linda Thomas-Hemak, MD is the president and CEO of the Wright Center for Graduate Medical Education, a non-profit that provides primary care and medical training. She has donated to both Democratic and Republican election campaigns.