A late-breaking investigative report, published Tuesday evening in POLITICO online by reporters Rachana Pradhan, Adam Cancryn, and Dan Diamond, has described personal conflict and rivalry between Alex Azar, Secretary of Health & Human Services, and Seema Verma, Administrator of the Center for Medicare & Medicare Services (CMS), that are affecting federal healthcare policy development.
As the POLITICO reporters wrote, “President Donald Trump’s health secretary, Alex Azar, and his Medicare chief, Seema Verma, are increasingly at odds, and their feuding has delayed the president’s long-promised replacement proposal for Obamacare and disrupted other health care initiatives central to Trump's reelection campaign, according to administration officials. Verma spent about six months developing a Trump administration alternative to the Affordable Care Act, only to have Azar nix the proposal before it could be presented to Trump this summer, sending the administration back to the drawing board, senior officials told POLITICO. Azar believed Verma’s plan would actually strengthen Obamacare, not kill it.”
What’s more, the reporters wrote, “Behind the policy differences over Obamacare, drug pricing and other initiatives, however, is a personal rivalry that has become increasingly bitter. This fall, Azar blocked Verma from traveling with Trump on Air Force One from Washington to Florida in early October for the unveiling of a high-profile Medicare executive order — an initiative largely drawn up by Verma's agency — said six officials with knowledge of the episode, which played out over days. Only after Verma complained to White House staff was she allowed on Trump’s plane, according to seven people familiar with the situation. Azar is a Cabinet secretary who oversees the 80,000-person Health and Human Services department, while Verma runs the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which administers Medicare, Medicaid and Obamacare and accounts for the lion's share of the overall HHS budget. That often affords the CMS administrator outsize autonomy and public visibility.”
As the article notes, “Before joining the administration, Azar and Verma were both based in Indianapolis, where the state's political and policy circle is so tight-knit that their children even attended the same school. While Vice President Mike Pence was governor of Indiana, Azar was a senior executive at the drug company Eli Lilly and developed ties with Pence. Verma was Pence's health care consultant, drafting his conservative overhaul of Medicaid. But despite their overlapping connections, the two are not personally close, officials said. The rift that has emerged between Azar and Verma over the last several months is deep, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former officials at HHS, CMS and the White House, who requested anonymity to describe sensitive inner workings of the administration. Privately, Azar's and Verma's camps are pointing the finger at one another. Disclosures about Verma’s extensive use of highly paid outside consultants to raise her personal profile have exacerbated the tensions. Time that could and should be spent on policy issues and advancing Trump's health agenda is instead being consumed by disputes, officials said.”
And the reporters quoted a healthcare official “close to the situation,” who told POLITICO that "The amount of time spent dealing with things like this, and having to have these fights and have these issues, are time that could've been spent thinking of better drug pricing proposals or other ways to advance parts of the agenda.”
The White House declined all comment.
