N.C. HHS Secretary Mandy Cohen and news roundup

North Carolina has been ground zero for some of 2017’s fiercest policy and political battles, including a legal fight between the Democratic governor and GOP legislature over Medicaid expansion. Enter Mandy Cohen, the state’s new HHS secretary, who says she’s a pragmatist and is focused on building bipartisan consensus for public health issues like the opioid epidemic. Cohen, who was a top CMS official in the Obama administration, joined POLITICO’s Dan Diamond to discuss what a state-level HHS secretary does (starts at the 1:45 mark), how she balances a state's pull-push relationship with the federal government (9:00), how her boss’s fight for Medicaid expansion has and hasn’t affected her job (12:40), where she sees opportunity for bipartisan public health successes (19:00), where North Carolina stands ahead of ACA open enrollment (26:30), and how she built her career to become a state HHS secretary before she turned 40 years old (30:45). Then after the break, POLITICO’s Paul Demko joins Dan to discuss Obamacare’s looming open enrollment and what he learned from his reporting trip to Iowa, where only one insurer is left in the state’s ACA individual insurance market. (Starts at the 35:20 mark.) We’d appreciate your help: Please share PULSE CHECK and rate us on your favorite podcast app! Have questions, suggestions or feedback? Email [email protected] or tweet him @ddiamond.

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