Tag: Seema Verma

Inspector general: Medicare chief broke rules on her publicity contracts

HHS watchdog finds Seema Verma mishandled millions of dollars in federal contracts that ultimately benefited friends, former Trump officials.

A top Trump administration health official violated federal contracting rules by steering millions of taxpayer dollars in contracts that ultimately benefited GOP-aligned communications consultants, according to an inspector general report released Thursday.

The contracts, which were directed by Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services chief Seema Verma, were only halted after a POLITICO investigationraised questions about their legality and the agency had paid out more than $5 million to the contractors.

The 70-page HHS inspector general report — the result of a 15-month audit — calls on HHS and CMS to take nine separate actions to address the “significant deficiencies” that it identified. Those actions include conducting a review of all the department’s contracts, and making a closer examination of whether CMS overpaid several of its contractors. Continue reading.

Medicare Chief Under Fire For Asking Taxpayers To Cover Stolen Jewelry

Seema Verma filed a claim for jewelry worth $43,000 that was apparently stolen from her rented SUV during a work trip to San Francisco.

A top Department of Health and Human Services official is facing backlash after she asked taxpayers to reimburse her for jewelry and other items stolen with her luggage during a work trip last year.

Seema Verma, who heads the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, filed a request to HHS for $47,000 to cover her lost property in August 2018, according to documents obtained by Politico.

The items, which included a $5,900 Ivanka Trump-brand pendant and a $325 moisturizer, were allegedly stolen a month earlier from inside an SUV that Verma had rented while visiting San Francisco for work.

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Scoop: Trump and Pence intervene in clash between top health officials

Axios logoThe working relationship between the Trump administration’s top health officials, HHS Secretary Alex Azar and CMS Administrator Seema Verma, has grown so dysfunctional that both President Trump and Vice President Pence have intervened to try to salvage the situation, according to three senior administration officials.

Why it matters: It’s an extraordinary intervention at the highest levels of government. And it highlights, as Politico extensively reported, the White House’s urgent desire for the heads of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to repair their working relationship.

Behind the scenes: Azar had a clearing of the air meeting with Verma on Wednesday, at Pence’s request, according to two administration officials. This wasn’t the first time the White House had to intervene to fix this broken relationship at the top of HHS.

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Top Trump health official spent $3 million on contractors who helped boost her visibility

Washington Post logoEarlier this year, a top Republican communications operative delivered a plan to boost the profile of Seema Verma, President Trump’s appointee overseeing health insurance for the elderly and poor. The “Executive Visibility Proposal” was a month-by-month blueprint to have her grant interviews to Women’s Day and other magazines, speak at prominent conferences and appear at Washington’s most prestigious social events.

Marked “privileged, pre-decisional, deliberative,” the eight-page proposal, emailed to Verma’s deputy chief of staff, was part of an unusual campaign carried out by high-paid contractors Verma brought on at a cost to taxpayers of more than $3 million.

This work over 19 months that provided “strategic communication” services by a network of politically connected contractors and subcontractors, first reported by Politico, came as Verma spoke about the importance of fostering individual responsibility and self-reliance among the nation’s needy.

Trump official paid president’s campaign $744,000 for experts to amp up her ‘personal brand’: report

AlterNet logoIn April, President Donald Trump’s Medicare and Medicaid Administrator Seema Verma faced public backlash after a report detailed a $2.25 million contract she awarded to Republican consultants to bolster her own public image.

But the scandal may have been even worse than that. According to Politico, among the 40 outside contractors hired as part of this contract included “eight former White House, presidential transition and campaign officials for President Donald Trump” — who charged up to $380 per hour for “strategic communications” work and relied on the federal government’s convoluted contractor system to conceal what they were doing.

Among the contractors Verma hired were Marcus Barlow, her former spokesman when she was consulting for Mike Pence while he was governor of Indiana. Barlow’s contract allowed him to bill up to $425,000 in one year — which is more than twice the salary of the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Also hired were Ken and Keith Nahigian, who worked for multiple GOP presidential campaigns and the Trump transition team, Brad Rateike, who advised the Trump campaign, and Maggie Mulvaney, a Republican fundraiser who is now working on Trump’s re-election team.

View the complete November 12 article by Matthew Chapman from Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.

Trump’s Medicare Overseer Spent Millions On Her ‘Personal Brand’

Seema Verma, the official Trump installed to oversee Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare, has been spending millions of tax dollars on Republican public relations and media consultants to make her look good.

Verma is the head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services agency (CMS), and Politico reports that in that role she has squandered over $3.25 million in taxpayer funds on the vanity project.

“The head of Obamacare doesn’t need outside consultants to get reporters to talk to her,” a CMS official told the outlet, highlighting the absurdity of Verma’s actions. Nonetheless, Verma has handed out money to a squadron of Republican consultants.

View the complete March 29 article by Oliver WIllis on The National Memo website here.

Exclusive: Key Trump health official spends millions on GOP-connected consultants

Seema Verma employs a team of private consultants who write her speeches, polish her brand and travel with her across the country.

The Trump appointee who oversees Medicare, Medicaid and Obamacare quietly directed millions of taxpayer dollars in contracts to Republican communications consultants during her tenure atop the agency — including hiring one well-connected GOP media adviser to bolster her public profile.

The communications subcontracts approved by Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma — routed through a larger federal contract and described to POLITICO by three individuals with firsthand knowledge of the agreements — represent a sharp break from precedent at the agency. Those deals, managed by Verma’s deputies, came in some cases over the objections of CMS staffers, who raised concerns about her push to use federal funds on GOP consultants and to amplify coverage of Verma’s own work. CMS has its own large communications shop, including about two dozen people who handle the press.

Verma, a close ally of Vice President Mike Pence, has become a lightning rod for pushing work requirements in Medicaid and spearheading the Trump administration’s efforts to unilaterally unwind pieces of Obamacare. She previously worked as a consultant to conservative states seeking to reshape health care programs for the poor.

View the complete March 29 article by Adam Cancryn and Dan Diamon on the Politico website here.

New insurance guidelines would undermine rules of the Affordable Care Act

Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, issued new guidance to states that would allow weakening of provisions of the Affordable Care Act. Credit: Kate Patterson, The Washington Post)

The Trump administration is urging states to tear down pillars of the Affordable Care Act, demolishing a basic rule that federal insurance subsidies can be used only by people buying health plans in marketplaces created under the law.

According to advice issued Thursday by federal health officials, states should be free to re­define the use of those subsidies, which began in 2014. They represent the first help the government ever has offered middle-class consumers to afford monthly premiums for private insurance.

States could allow the subsidies to be used for health plans the administration has been promoting outside the ACA marketplaces that are less expensive because they provide skimpier benefits and fewer consumer protections. In an even more dramatic change, states could let residents with employer-based coverage set up accounts in which they mingle the federal subsidies with health-care funds from their job or personal tax-deferred savings funds to use for premiums or other medical expenses.

View the complete November 29 article by Amy Goldstein on The Washington Post website here.

New Medicaid chief says recipients should get jobs, pay premiums

The following article by Amy Goldstein of the Washington Post was posted on the StarTribune website March 15, 2017:

Seema Verma, the new administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, is shown with Vice President Mike Pence after being sworn in Tuesday.

Hours after she was sworn in, the Trump administration’s top official for Medicaid and her boss dispatched a letter to the nation’s governors, urging states to alter the insurance program for poor and disabled people by charging them insurance premiums, requiring them to pay part of emergency room bills and prodding them to get jobs.

The letter, sent Tuesday night by Seema Verma, the new administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, also derides the Medicaid expansion that 31 states and the District of Columbia adopted under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Continue reading “New Medicaid chief says recipients should get jobs, pay premiums”