ABOUT

A National Health Policy Expert

Seema Verma’s journey to becoming one of the longest-serving Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) Administrators in modern history started from the front lines of the health care system. While she began her career in Washington D.C. working with the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials on HIV/AIDS policy on behalf of state public health departments, she eventually transitioned to working at the Health and Hospital Corporation of Marion County(HHC), a municipal corporation that operated the public hospital, community health centers, and a nursing home as well as the local public health department. In this role, she saw firsthand the day-to-day issues between providers and patients. Her initial role was as the Administrator of the Healthy Babies Consortium, focusing on maternal and child issues. She proceeded to work her way up to Vice President of Policy and Planning for all of HHC.
 
Starting in 2001, Seema founded, and eventually sold, a health policy consulting firm that helped states and the private industry with a range of healthcare issues. Right off the bat, she began working with the state of Indiana on a state planning grant addressing the uninsured. In conjunction with Former Governor Mitch Daniels and his team, Seema was the architect of the Healthy Indiana Plan (HIP), one of the first Medicaid consumer-directed health programs for the uninsured using Health Savings Accounts (HSAs). Seema was also responsible for assisting in negotiating the approval from CMS, getting a glimpse at her future. 
 
Outside of her work on HIP, Seema’s consulting firm worked with other states on their response to the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid and worked with the private sector to help implement and respond to its new regulations and other health care issues.  
 
Her career with CMS truly started when she began working with Mike Pence, the Governor of Indiana at the time and future Vice President. Seema worked alongside Governor Pence on the Healthy Indiana Plan 2.0, helping negotiate its waiver of approval from CMS as she did with the first edition. 
 
After President Donald Trump and Vice President Pence took office, Seema was nominated by the president in 2016 and became the 15th person to be confirmed by the Senate in 2017, on a bi-partisan basis.  As Administrator, she oversaw health insurance programs for over 140 million Americans, through Medicare, Medicaid, and the Insurance Exchanges, a budget of $1.3 trillion, and over 6,000 employees.  In this role, she oversaw the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation as well as setting the regulatory guidelines for the American health care system.  Seema was the architect of CMS’s strategic vision, implementing over sixteen strategic initiatives. During her tenure, Seema’s policy reforms increased market competition, price transparency, and interoperability, while reducing regulations. She also successfully advanced value-based care in primary care and state government flexibility. Her many historic initiatives, including Patients Over Paperwork, Advancing Interoperability, and Price Transparency reduced regulatory burden, advanced value-based care, rural health, and saved the healthcare system billions of dollars. Seema also worked to accelerate value-based care transformation and address the social determinants of health by advancing new payment models throughout CMS programs, including models for drug pricing that resulted in $35 a month for insulin prices. Under her leadership, Medicare Advantage began its rapid growth trajectory. Premiums dropped to historic lows in the program as well as in Medicare Advantage, Part D, and the insurance exchanges, where the insurance markets were finally stabilized.
 
​When the global pandemic hit our country, Seema served on the White House COVID-19 Task Force, where she led efforts to drive telehealth, remote care, Hospital Without Walls, and Hospital at Home across the healthcare system while creating flexibility for health providers to augment the healthcare workforce, expand services and testing, and ensure access to vaccines and therapeutics. Her work with Operation Warp Speed ensured that Americans could avail the COVID vaccines for free.  
 
Modern Healthcare ranked her as one of the “100 Most Influential People in Healthcare” in 2020 and one of the nation’s “Top 25 Women Leaders in Healthcare” in 2019. Seema has written extensively about a range of healthcare issues, being published in the Wall Street Journal, Health Affairs, the Washington Post, NewsWeek, USA Today, and a number of other publications. She has also spoken on several news shows, including Fox News, Fox Business, CNN, CBS, ABC, etc. Currently, Following her role with CMS, Seema was a Senior Advisor at TPG, a member of the Cressey Distinguished Executive Council, served on the boards of Lumeris, Wellsky, ClaimsXten, ShiftKey, and as an advisor to both early-stage and Fortune 500 companies. Currently, Seema serves on the boards of Monogram Health and Lifestance.

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​She was appointed as General Manager and Senior Vice President at Oracle in April 2023. In January 2024, her role was expanded to Executive Vice President, and she now oversees Oracle Health.