Secretary Azar Announces Appointment of James Parker

Today, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar announced that James Parker will serve as Senior Advisor to the Secretary for Health Reform and Director of the Office of Health Reform at HHS. Mr. Parker will lead the initiative to address the cost and availability of health insurance.

Upon this announcement, Secretary Azar said: “Jim Parker has spent his life working in the private sector to provide Americans access to quality, affordable health insurance. His knowledge and expertise will be vital to our work at HHS to ensure that Americans have access to insurance that meets their needs.”

This follows the recent announcement of Daniel M. Best to serve as Senior Advisor to the Secretary for Drug Pricing Reform and Brett Giroir, M.D., to serve as Senior Advisor to the Secretary for Mental Health and Opioid Policy, in addition to his duties as Assistant Secretary for Health.

These individuals will help advance three of Secretary Azar’s previously identified four initiatives for his transformation agenda: combating the opioid crisis; bringing down the high cost of prescription drugs; addressing the cost and availability of health insurance; and transforming our healthcare system to a value-based system. 

Biographical Information

An accomplished healthcare executive with broad leadership experience, James Parker has spent his career working to provide Americans with quality, affordable health insurance. He most recently served as Chief Executive Officer of MDwise, Inc., an Indiana Medicaid managed care organization with over 300,000 members and $1.4 billion in revenue. He also led the development of a provider-sponsored health plan and population health management capabilities within Indiana University Health, an Indianapolis-based integrated health system and served as co-chair of the Indiana University Health Population Health Management Services Organization. Mr. Parker previously spent 20 years with Anthem, Inc. in a number of senior leadership roles advancing initiatives to improve the quality and affordability of health insurance.