News: New HHS and CMS leaders picked for 2017 posts

President-elect Donald Trump selected Republican Representative Tom Price, 62, an orthopedic surgeon from Georgia to head the Department of Health and Human Services and Seema Verma, founder of the Indiana health policy consulting firm SVC Inc., as his pick for administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, according to report from Bloomberg Politics.

In 2015, Price co-authored The Coding Flexibility in Healthcare Act (H.R. 3018) with Representative Marsha Blackburn to allow use of either ICD-9 or ICD-10 codes to be submitted on claims with dates of service for a six-month period following the set ICD-10-CM/PCS implementation date.

According to The Washington Post, Price is “a fierce critic of the Affordable Care Act and a proponent of overhauling the nation’s entitlement programs.”

Verma, according to ICD-10 Monitor, is credited with being the architect of the Healthy Indiana Plan (HIP), considered to be the nation’s first consumer-directed Medicaid program for able-bodied adults and has a close relationship to Vice President-Elect and outgoing Indiana Governor Mike Pence.

In comments before the Citi Global Healthcare Conference on December 8, CMS Acting Administrator Andy Slavitt said that “even with policy differences,” his “primary responsibility is to help execute the best transition possible” between himself and the healthcare agencies’ new leadership.