Seema Verma, 50, tendered her resignation to President Donald Trump on Thursday (File)
Washington:
Seema Verma, one of the highest-ranking Indian Americans in the outgoing Trump administration, has resigned from her top health care position days before Joe Biden filed his sworn in as the next president of the United States.
Ms. Verma, 50, tendered her resignation to President Donald Trump on Thursday as an administrator of Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services, a position she has held in the Trump administration for the past four years. She was one of Trump’s closest healthcare confidants.
She was also appointed by Trump in May last year as one of the key members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, set up by US President Donald Trump to combat the deadly disease.
“With the Trump administration coming to an end, I have officially resigned and am preparing to hand over the keys to the next administrator next week,” she said in a tweet Friday.
In her three-page resignation letter she posted to Twitter, she said, “Taken in totality, the actions CMS has taken over the past four years will radically transform healthcare for generations to come and truly transform healthcare for every American patient. and will leave a lasting mark on our country. ”“ It has been an honor to serve the American people for nearly four years with the talented and dedicated employees of CMS, for which I will always be grateful, ”she said as CMS over the past four years.
Her resignation will take effect on January 20, the day of Biden’s inauguration as the 46th president of the United States.
She is the longest-serving administrator in CMS history.
Mrs. Verma was born in the United States. But her parents migrated to the US from Punjab. Her husband, also a physician, has origins in Patna, Bihar.
She said that CMS never hesitated in its eagerness to challenge a failed status quo, and from the outset this government was imbued with a culture of problem-solving.
“This culture allowed me to think creatively and act courageously in shaping the agency’s agenda, confident that no good idea would be shelved because it upsets the apple cart or makes the wrong interest group unhappy.
“For the lasting benefit of our country, you never hesitated in this determination to refocus the health care system on those who should always have been the focus: patients,” she said.
Mrs. Verma had visited India a few years ago.
“That was very important for me to share India with my children as well. I wanted them to see where they were from and meet many of their relatives,” she said, adding that modern means of communication have shortened distances. . .
“In the past we tried to go during the summer, over the years it gets harder, but I really appreciate that technology has made it a lot easier,” she told PTI in an interview in June 2019.
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