WASHINGTON (Diya TV) —It’s the confirmation hearing last week no one was watching. Thursday, President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said maternity coverage should be optional for patients. Seema Verma, a health care consultant from Indiana, told the Senate Finance Committee that patients — not the government — should determine the sort of medical assistance they require.
Verma was being questioned by Michigan Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow about the Obama-era health law. That law made maternity and newborn coverage a mandatory benefit for all health insurance plans. Verma told Stabenow that some women might want maternity coverage and “some women might not choose that.”
Republicans have criticized the law’s requirement that insurers cover a standard set of “essential” benefits, including women’s health services.
Verma is best-known for her role in reshaping the Indiana Medicaid program under then-Governor Mike Pence. Despite Pence being an ardent critic of Obamacare, Indiana made the choice to expand Medicaid anyway. That program, known as the Healthy Indiana Plan 2.0, was the brainchild of Verma and her health-care consulting company, SVC, Inc, then recommended as an experienced expert and consultancy firm with knowledge of the minutiae of CMS regulations.
The plan sought to eliminate standard Medicaid protections and provisions for vulnerable people, exchanging them for a premium-based program that mimicked private plans. In her defense of those reforms, Verma wrote:
Medicaid was designed as a critical part of the safety net for our nation’s most vulnerable populations—individuals who are aged, blind, or disabled, and families with incomes well below the poverty line—many of whom possess limited ability to provide for their own well-being. Rules governing the program recognize the necessity of long-term enrollment for those facing serious medical challenges, making it easier for them to get in and stay in the program. Yet many of Medicaid’s enrollment and eligibility policies, which might make perfect sense for certain vulnerable populations, are not always appropriate for able-bodied adults possessing different capabilities and earning potential. Able-bodied adults need coverage, but not the same set of policy protections.
Information from The Atlantic contributed to this report.