Washington: President Barack Obama's pick for surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, breezed through his confirmation hearing before a Senate panel even as several Republican senators expressed concern over his support for Obama's signature healthcare law.

Murthy, 36, who would be the first Indian-American to become "America's doctor" if confirmed by the Democratic controlled Senate, was an early supporter of Obama and his health-care law.

A physician with the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and an instructor at Harvard Medical School, he co-founded an advocacy group in 2008 called Doctors for Obama, a national organization of 16,000 doctors and medical students.

It later became Doctors for America and promoted the Affordable Care Act nicknamed Obamacare.

At Tuesday's hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labour and Pensions Committee, at least one Republican senator said he expected the Brookline doctor to be confirmed by the full Senate thanks to a recent change in the chamber's rules allowing a filibuster to be overcome with a simple majority.
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