Alex Michael Azar II, a former Eli Lilly & Co. pharmaceutical executive, has been nominated by President Donald Trump to be the next U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services. The nomination was received by the U.S. Senate on Nov. 14 and referred to the Committee on Finance.
Here’s a short list of things to know about Azar:
• A native of Maryland’s Eastern Shore, Azar served as general counsel and deputy secretary for HHS under President George W. Bush.
At his July 2001 confirmation hearing in front of the Senate Finance Committee, Azar introduced his wife, Jennifer, and then-18-month-old daughter, Claire. (The Azars now have two children.) His father, Alex, an eye surgeon in Maryland, attended. His mother, a registered nurse, could not attend.
• After obtaining a law degree in 1991 from Yale University, Azar served in 1992 as law clerk to Associate Justice Antonin Scalia.
Upon Scalia’s death in 2016, Azar wrote: “The most important volume in his private chambers when I clerked for him was the Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, Second Edition.
"He hated the Third Edition. It was an abomination because it described how words were used, rather than how they should be used, as the Second Edition had done.”
Azar wrote the piece for Delmarva Now, a news outlet in Salisbury, Maryland, where he graduated from Parkside High School in 1985.
• Azar is a member of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra board of directors, serving about two hours a week, unpaid. The most recent symphony annual report lists Azar and his wife as donors giving at least $10,000.
• He incorporated his home-based Seraphim Strategies LLC in January 2017, to provide strategic consulting and counsel on the biopharmaceutical and health care industries. As chairman of the company, he served in February on a panel exploring public policy on biotech investment. His Indianapolis home has an assessed value of $1.1 million.
• In introducing First Lady Laura Bush at the 2005 National Youth Summit in Washington, D.C., Azar said, “It’s very tempting to think of the teenage years as years of preparation. They’re ideal years for education, obviously — for learning the skills and knowledge that allow us to be productive workers, wise parents and good neighbors. “But focusing on preparation shouldn’t become an excuse for waiting to take action. Anyone who is old enough to identify problems is mature enough to help solve them. People who take responsibility for their communities and take the initiative to contribute can become active members of their communities at age 13.”
• Bloomberg Politics reported this week that at a conference in May Azar talked about health insurance rates: “Why did things erupt? They erupted because we have seen a complete and fundamental restructuring of health insurance in the United States over the last three to five years.”
A year earlier at another conference, he said, “When the government gets involved it is more likely than not to create perverse incentives and unintended consequences than when the market players can work together to figure that out.”