Xavier Becerra: Nominee Currently: Alex Azar
The Department of Health and Human Services, one of the government’s largest, has been the Trump administration’s main vehicle to weaken the Affordable Care Act and shift health policy in a more conservative direction in other ways. The department has sought to let states require some people on Medicaid to work or prepare for jobs, a move blocked by the courts. It has restricted federal funding of research that uses human fetal tissue.
Though a Republican Congress failed to repeal the ACA, HHS took many steps though executive action. It slashed funding to help boost enrollment in the insurance marketplaces created under the law, ended one type of subsidy for insurers, and widened the availability of inexpensive health plans that can bypass the law’s rules for insurance benefits and consumer protections.In contrast, the ACA is the basis of plans President-elect Biden has advocated for helping more Americans get affordable health coverage. He says that federal insurance subsidies should expand to help more middle-class families. He wants ACA health plans to be given to poor residents of a dozen states that have not expanded their Medicaid programs under the law. Biden also has proposed lowering from 65 years old to 60 the age for people to join Medicare, the vast federal insurance programs for older Americans. All these changes would require Congress to adopt them.
Xavier Becerra
California’s attorney general
Former congressman Becerra is the attorney general of California. An unorthodox pick, he has led a multistate lawsuit to preserve the Affordable Care Act. Amid the coronavirus pandemic, which has disproportionately hit Black and Hispanic populations, he would be the first Latino to run HHS.
Source: Washington Post Reported by Amy Goldstein and Yasmeen Abutaleb.
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Attorney General Xavier Becerra | State of California
Xavier Becerra for California Attorney General
BECERRA, Xavier | US House of Representatives: History
2021-01-20 California AG Xavier Becerra could be 1st Latino to run Health & Human Services
2021-01-20 California Attorney General Files Nine Lawsuits In One Day As Trump Leaves Office Becerra filed nine new lawsuits Tuesday against the Trump administration, targeting efforts to roll back greenhouse gas emission regulations and the Endangered Species Act, among others. “We have held the Trump Administration accountable time and again for their failure to follow the rules or respect our nation’s environmental laws,” Becerra said in a statement. “It will take time to unwind the havoc the Trump Administration has wrought. That’s why the nine lawsuits we filed today are so important.”
Becerra will finish his time as California’s attorney general having filed 122 lawsuits against the Trump administration, an average of one every two weeks during Trump’s time in office.
2021-01-20 Incoming HHS Secretary Becerra will be a champion for whistle-blowers Most are applauding Xavier Becerra as President-elect Joe Biden’s choice to run the U.S Health and Human Services. This is the agency — with nearly $1.3 trillion at its disposal — that oversees the safety of our drugs (through the Food and Drug Administration), deals with outbreaks and pandemics (through Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), and administers Medicare and Medicaid. It is at the epicenter of ensuring our ultimate public health and safety. No easy task, especially these days.
But there is another key attribute of this regulatory body that perhaps even further separates it from its sister agencies. It is a magnet for fraud. Billions of dollars a year of it. And surely to grow larger as the trillions in COVID relief snake through the system into the hands of those who would put profit before patient well-being. With all the strengths and conviction we can expect to see from our new health care czar, it is in the area of fraud-busting where we likely will see soon-to-be Secretary Becerra shine brightest. Based on his strong record as California attorney general, he likely will use the one-two punch of whistle-blowers and the False Claims Act to get the job done.
2021-01-15 Is Medicare For All A Possibility Under Xavier Becerra? Becerra had a pivotal role in helping to draft the Affordable Care Act (ACA) during his 12 terms in the House of Representatives representing California. And as California’s attorney general, Becerra led a coalition of 20 states and the District of Columbia to protect the ACA against the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle it.
However, while Becerra has fought to protect the ACA, he has expressed that he wants to see a single-payer health care system—commonly called Medicare for All—established in the U.S. “For me, health care is a right,” he said. “I’ve been a single-payer advocate all my life,” Becerra told Kaiser Health News in Feb. 2019. Those who approve of Becerra for the job say that his willingness to fight for a national health care system, combined with his extensive background working with lawmakers, is exactly the combination that can help advance Biden’s national health care plan.
2021-01-13 Xavier Becerra’s Nonprofit Problem No federal agency works as much with nonprofits as the Department of Health and Human Services. That is one reason Xavier Becerra, President-elect Biden’s pick to lead the agency, will face opposition. His record, as California attorney general since 2017 and in Congress for nearly a quarter-century, has been one of hostility to nonprofit institutions and the donors who support them. In the House Mr. Becerra often accused charitable foundations of failing to donate funds equitably.
2020-12-07 5 things to know about Xavier Becerra, Joe Biden’s nominee for top health official
2020-12-06 Biden picks Xavier Becerra as nominee for health and human services secretary
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