3 Questions for Claire Perkins, SM ’14
Senior Policy Analyst and Health Finance Specialist, Assistant Secretary for Financial Resources/Office of Budget/Division of Health Benefits and Income Support, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
In her role at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Claire Perkins, SM ’14, works to manage the new resources and responsibilities given to HHS by Congress through legislation like the CARES Act, in addition to maintaining the ongoing work of major health care programs like Medicare.
Q1: How has your work at HHS changed since the coronavirus outbreak in the United States? What’s the atmosphere like?
A lot of HHS has pivoted towards thinking about immediate response. COVID-19 impacts basically every part of our work. Immediately folks at HHS started thinking about, “Okay, what do we need to be doing differently?” I work on financing and policy for Medicare, but it’s an all-hands-on-deck approach here, whether it’s FDA thinking about protocols for approving a vaccine, or NIH thinking about researching a new test or treatment option, or CDC rolling out public health campaigns, or the work I do with CMS and the Medicare and Medicaid programs, or HHS working with lawmakers so that they can make changes through legislation. We’ve been working on a lot of technical assistance for the Hill, but we’re also asking: “Can we change the regulations under our current authorities? What can we do to create the flexibility the health care community needs right now?”
Q2: How does your office work with Congress on legislative or regulatory solutions?
It’s an advisory role, but it’s also making Congress aware of best practices or standards within the health care domain. When senators or house members or their staff have ideas, they often pass them to us and ask for feedback. So it’s a two-way back and forth between HHS and the Hill. They’re very actively soliciting our ideas. “FDA or CMS, you all are the experts. What do you need right now to be able to effectively address this pandemic?”
In addition to the large amount of funding and various important provisions of the CARES Act and the two pieces of legislation that preceded it, one key piece of the legislation that’s passed already is that it includes provisions to require private health insurance providers (or allow for our programs like Medicare and Medicaid) to provide an eventual coronavirus vaccine and coronavirus testing without cost sharing, so that it’s not a barrier for people to access those services.
Q3: What are some of the related health economics issues your office is looking at going forward?
This is definitely a two-part crisis. We can see the immediate effects right now. The unemployment rate is catastrophic and we’re in a place economically that looks like the worst it’s been since the Great Depression. One thing we’re thinking about a lot is how the economic stability of the country and the ability to pay for health care services are tied together. A lot of people in the U.S. get their health insurance through their jobs. So if they’re losing their jobs, they’re losing their health insurance. We’re thinking about how that impacts people, and where they can turn to get health insurance.
Another coming crisis that’s definitely going to be exacerbated is the stability of the Trust Funds that pay for the Medicare program. A huge portion of the Medicare program is paid for from payroll taxes. That’s something we’re going to have to think really critically about as we come out of this crisis.