Stealthily, AHRQ has acquired a new head, but the ax still hovers over it.
Very quietly, researcher Richard Kronick, PhD was named by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to be the new director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). He joins an organization that remains squarely on the House GOP’s chopping block and with few friends strong enough to ward off the blow.
Last fall, when a House appropriations subcommittee voted to eliminate all AHRQ funding, I wrote that the agency’s execution went almost unnoticed: it didn’t even rate a separate mention in the committee’s lengthy press release.
Back then, the House GOP’s big target was Big Bird, a/k/a funding for public broadcasting. Since then, the rampaging Republican right-wing has decided it won’t approve subsidies to farmers unless it can also slash food stamps to the poor and that undocumented immigrants are mostly a law-and-order problem, not a human one. That these positions contradict views held by many conservative Republican senators, governors and party leaders has had little to no effect.
Enter Kronick, after a months-long search to replace Dr. Carolyn Clancy, who’d held the top AHRQ post since February, 2003. Oddly, the announcement by HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius wasn’t posted on the HHS website or even the AHRQ one. Searching Kronick’s name simply turned up press releases from his current position as deputy assistant secretary for health policy. According to MedPage Today, the naming of Kronick was made “in the department’s daily electronic afternoon newsletter.”
Why? My guess: politics.
Clancy was known for good relations with policymakers of both parties; she was upgraded from “acting director” to permanent status during the George W. Bush administration. Her predecessor, Dr. John Eisenberg, enjoyed a similar bipartisan rapport. Of course, that was before conservatism gave way to crusaders. Kronick, by contrast, has a background almost tailor-made to tick off Tea Partyers.
