Azar, Verma battle for Trump’s favor amid White House showdown

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Even after Trump urged them to end their feud, the president’s top two health deputies couldn’t resist competing for his attention — and undermining each other on Twitter and cable TV

Even after Donald Trump had urged them to end their feud, the president’s top two health deputies couldn’t resist competing for his attention — and undermining each other on Twitter and cable TV.on Trump’s recent order that requires hospitals and health insurers to post their prices. "The federal agency I lead, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, is taking swift action to implement it," Verma wrote in an accompanying Chicago Tribune op-ed that day.

POLITICO spoke with more than two dozen current and former health department officials, many of whom requested anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, and reviewed federal documents obtained via Freedom of Information Act requests. “Together, Chairman Price and Seema Verma are the dream team that will transform our health care system for the benefit of all Americans,” Trump wrote in a November 2016 statement. Their partnership was rocky from the start and lasted less than a year. Price disappointed Trump with his failure to craft a popular enough plan to persuade senators to replace Obamacare. He then resigned after revelations that he spent more than a million taxpayer dollars on charter-plane travel.

Multiple White House and HHS aides urged Azar's deputies to fire Verma as part of a broader effort to "clean house," former administration officials said. That message was communicated to the incoming secretary, too. “When Azar first came to HHS, he was advised by multiple White House officials to fire her for leaking and for her notorious claims of sexism,” said an individual familiar with Azar’s hiring.

Two former HHS officials described a 2018 heated meeting where Verma told one Azar adviser that if he pursued a drug-pricing plan affecting insurance rebates, she’d “make sure he’d never work in this town again,” said one of the officials familiar with the meeting. A CMS spokesperson denied that Verma made the remark. Azar and his team ended up pursuing the plan regardless but Verma helped torpedo the idea in an Oval Office meeting in July 2019.

 

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