Top Trump Official Dims Hopes for Single-Payer Health Care

Stepping into the land of the Trump resistance, Seema Verma flatly rejected California’s pursuit of single-payer health care as unworkable and dismissed the Affordable Care Act as too flawed to ever succeed. Speaking Wednesday at the Commonwealth Club here, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said she supports granting states flexibility on health care but indicated she would not give California the leeway it would need to spend federal money on a single-payer system. “I think a lot of the analysis has shown it’s unaffordable,” Verma said during a question-and-answer session following her speech. “It doesn’t make sense for us to waste time on something that’s not going to work.” During her speech, Verma issued a broader warning to advocates pushing for a Medicare-for-all program nationally. She said that “socialized” approach to medicine would endanger the program and the healthcare it provides for millions of older Americans.