P2025 links: O’Neill is a biotech investor and former CEO of the Thiel Foundation, and close to right-wing Peter Thiel and the Silicon Valley Teneo Network, a Project 2025 advisory group. In 2016, Thiel pushed O’Neill for open HHS positions with Trump 1.0 administration. Teneo was set up by Leonard Leo to draw younger tech billionaires to support Trump and Project 2025’s agenda of deregulation; Thiel was an early member. O’Neill managed Thiel’s Mithri Capital Management fund; he also set up the Thiel Fellowship and Breakout Labs program for student and biotech entrepreneurs.

Qualifications: Served as HHS Principal Associate Deputy Director during the George W. Bush administration (2007-8) with a policy portfolio including FDA, NIH, AHRQ, Office of Public Health and Science, BARDA, and global health. Also was Associate Deputy Secretary and Senior Advisor to the HHS Deputy Secretary (Aug. 2005 to Nov. 2007).

Disqualifications: No medical background; frequent FDA and federal health agency regulatory critic. 

Views: A libertarian, O’Neill argued in 2014 that medicines should be approved once their safety is reviewed by the FDA, rather than requiring effectiveness data. He favors a free market for health care. As HHS deputy, he would work under RFK Jr. to implement changes to HHS regulations; RFK Jr. has promised to deregulate health agencies. O’Neill would oversee the day-to-day operations of all sub-agencies, including those managing Medicare, Medicaid program, public health emergency preparedness, and federal research priorities, and more. As a pharm investor, he was CEO of the anti-aging SENS Research Foundation from 2021 to 2023, and joined the board of Advantage Therapeutics, a pharma company developing neurodegenerative treatments.