WFYI
By: Jake Harper
Seema Verma, healthcare consultant that aided to form Indiana’s health policy, has been assigned by President-elect Trump to lead Medicaid and Medicare Services. She will be essential when President-elect Trump and Congress begin to make changes in the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid programs.
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Joan Alker, with the Georgetown Center for Children and Families, agrees. “It is a good thing that she has experience with Medicaid and it is a positive that Governor Pence worked with Ms. Verma to advance a version of Medicaid expansion,” she says. But Trump’s pick of Congressman Tom Price to head the Department of Health and Human Services worries Alker. Price has advocated severely cutting Medicaid funding, and Alker says that could mean people will lose Medicaid. “This represents potentially a very damaging and fundamental and chaotic restructuring of the Medicaid program.”
In this context, Alker says Medicaid expansion plans similar to Indiana’s are unlikely to move forward. “Remember, the Healthy Indiana Plan has occurred in the context of generous federal funding,” she says. “And I think some of that is on deck to go away.”
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