Seema Verma to be chief of Centres for Medicare and Medicaid Services

The US Senate on 13 March 2017 confirmed healthcare consultant Seema Verma as administrator of the 1 trillion dollars Centres for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). The Senate voted 55-43 to approve Seema Verma to run the US health program.

Seema Verma was a nominee of President Donald Trump. The Indian-American woman will be running the US government’s health program for the elderly, poor and disabled.

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The CMS is an agency that oversees health insurance programmes that cover more than 130 million Americans.

Seema Verma

• Verma is the owner of SVC Inc, a healthcare consulting firm

• She has helped redesign Medicaid programs in several States, including Indiana when Vice President Mike Pence was Governor.

• Verma will report to US Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price.

• Verma is a first-generation American, whose parents emigrated from India to the US.

• In 1993, she received her bachelor’s degree in life sciences from the University of Maryland, College Park.

• In 1996, she earned a master’s degree in public health with a concentration in health policy and management from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.

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She was nominated to serve as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on 29 November 2016, by Donald Trump, who was the President-elect at that time.

Earlier, the House Republicans released the text of a bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. The health care bill backed by Trump will roll back the key elements of Obama’s health care law and will limit the overall federal financing for Medicaid in the future.