The Senate today confirmed healthcare consultant Seema Verma as administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) in a 55-to-43 vote, putting her at the heart of efforts by President Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans to enact healthcare reform for the second time in less than 10 years.
Verma has specialized in working with state Medicaid programs to improve care while lowering costs. The Trump administration will count on her to achieve those goals in a federal program that stands to shrink in a House Republican bill that repeals and replaces the 7-year-old Affordable Care Act (ACA). The measure would eliminate expanded Medicaid eligibility that 31 states chose under the ACA, and convert open-ended federal contributions to state programs to a fixed, per-capita amount, putting the program on a budget, as it were.
