NYT frontpage: Health Industry Bidding to Hire Medicare Chief [View All]

The federal official who runs Medicare and was intimately involved in drafting legislation to overhaul the program is the object of a bidding war among five firms hoping to hire him to advise clients affected by the measure.

Though the official, Thomas A. Scully, is not widely known outside Washington, his exhaustive knowledge of the Medicare program and the intricacies of the legislation, approved by Congress last week, would make him a prize catch for any law firm or private equity firm.

In an interview on Tuesday, Mr. Scully said that his discussions with potential employers complied with federal ethics regulations and that he had seen no reason to recuse himself from work on the legislation. He said he had consulted with the top ethics officer for the Department of Health and Human Services and received a waiver allowing him to continue work on the bill. The department confirmed his account.

Mr. Scully has made no secret of the fact that he has been looking for jobs outside the government for more than six months — even as he spent hundreds of hours in closed sessions with House and Senate negotiators working out countless details of the legislation, which makes the biggest changes in Medicare since creation of the program in 1965.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/03/national/03MEDI.html?pagewanted=all&position=