Expanding coverage a top priority for Becerra
FOLLOWING TWO RELATIVELY tame confirmation hearings, Xavier Becerra appears poised to become the next HHS secretary.
“If I was a betting man, I’d bet that you’ve got the votes to be approved,” Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), said following Becerra’s showing before the Senate Finance Committee. Still, nothing is certain in today’s political climate. As of deadline, a handful of key senators had yet to indicate which way they would vote.
Becerra threw his support behind efforts to improve access to care, aligning himself with President Joe Biden’s healthcare agenda.
During his Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing, several senators asked Becerra how he planned to address provider shortages that have limited underserved communities’ ability to get the care they need. He leaned heavily on efforts to increase the pipeline of providers, including Congress’ recent decision to fund 1,000 more graduate medical education slots. He said federal policies should reward providers for delivering primary-care services. Becerra also supported the growth of Federally Qualified Community Health Centers and the National Health Service Corps to improve access to care.
But the HHS nominee never mentioned increasing the number of work visas for providers, expanding providers’ scope of practice, relying more on non-physician providers like nurse practitioners or physician assistants for primary care and other services or other ways to boost provider access. When it comes to insurance access, Becerra supported the new open enrollment period for healthcare exchanges as well as a Medicare buy-in program. He expressed concern about the lack of affordable coverage options for people without insurance who don’t qualify for marketplace subsidies, suggesting more people should get larger tax credits to purchase coverage.
Becerra didn’t answer how he would address the dwindling Medicare trust fund as HHS secretary but said general funds could be used to pay for Medicare expansion.
He also embraced price transparency, which received widespread, bipartisan support from the committee. Becerra said that HHS would aggressively enforce price transparency under his leadership, suggesting that Congress should give the agency more power to create and enforce transparency rules.
“You have to be able to see how they’re operating,” he said. ●