Indian-origin Verma confirmed by senate

President Donald Trump’s pick to run Medicare and Medicaid, Indian-American Seema Verma, has won confirmation from a divided senate as lawmakers braced for another epic battle over the government’s role in health care.

An Indiana health care consultant and a protégé of Vice President Mike Pence, Verma was approved by a 55-43 vote, largely along party lines. She’ll head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a $1 trillion agency that oversees health insurance programs for more than 130 million people. It’s part of the Department of Health and Human Services. Verma, a firstgeneration American whose parents emigrated from India, takes over at CMS as a House Republican health care bill backed by Trump would make sweeping changes to the agency. That legislation would roll back key elements of former President Barack Obama’s health care law, including its Medicaid expansion for low-income people.

More significantly, the GOP bill would limit overall federal financing for Medicaid in the future.

Taken together, those changes could leave 24 million more people uninsured by 2026, the Congressional Budget Office said Monday in an assessment that’s bound to complicate the bill’s already difficult path. With a background in public health, Verma has said she wants government programmes to improve health, not just pay bills. AP