Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Healthcare Policy Under the New Administration with Amber Walsh of McGuireWoods LLP 2-5-25
Wed, 05 Feb 2025
In this episode, Amber Walsh, Partner at McGuireWoods LLP, breaks down RFK Jr.’s confirmation, Dr. Oz’s expected role at CMS, executive orders impacting healthcare, potential Medicaid cuts, and what investors and operators should be watching closely in this evolving landscape.
Chapter 1: What is the focus of today's discussion on healthcare policy?
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. We try each day to bring you brilliant business guests, private equity guests, and a lot more. Today, we're joined by Amber Walsh, brilliant leader at McGuire Woods. She follows the healthcare world very closely. She also lives in the private equity world or the intersection of private equity and healthcare.
She's going to talk to us today about some of the things we should be watching in the new Trump administration, executive orders, RFK Jr., and a lot more. Amber, why don't you take us away and tell us some of the things that are happening and how we should think about some of those things.
Absolutely. Well, we are sitting here right at this moment, just within the past couple of hours, that Robert F. Kennedy's confirmation made it through the Senate Finance Committee with a 13 to 14 split. And it's very interesting because it sets up some health policy thinking that you should be watching. A lot of people had been closely watching what Senator Cassidy out of Louisiana would do.
Chapter 2: What does RFK Jr.'s confirmation mean for healthcare?
He was the Republican that sits on the Senate Finance Committee that was on the fence. And as people may or may not know, there's actually four physicians in the Senate. They comprise what is known as the Senate Doc Caucus. They happen to all four be Republican right now. And three of the four sit on the Senate Finance Committee. Cassidy was very closely watched.
Ultimately, he gave his support to Kennedy and that just passed out of committee. And with Cassidy's support, he is expected to now get the nomination once it actually goes to the full Senate. So we come to this moment right here, assuming now that Robert F. Kennedy will be the secretary of HHS. And soon thereafter, Mehmet Oz, another physician, will probably also be the head of CMS.
Obviously, people have been closely, closely watching this. this flurry of executive activity through a host of orders and memoranda and other proclamations and activities at a moment when the campaign actually did not have a huge focus on health care. The campaign focused on the economy and immigration. But a lot of the things that we're seeing in these executive orders
Chapter 3: How will Dr. Oz's role at CMS impact healthcare?
should impact the healthcare industry. And we'll talk here about the things that investors should be looking at, but that's really just starting with the moment in time where we sit.
Thank you. So let's dive into two of those different subjects. First is Oz and RFK, Dr. Oz and RFK Jr., And then we'll talk about sort of, yes, there was not a lot of talk during the campaign about healthcare, but now there's a lot of talk amongst Doge, Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk, about Medicaid spending and talks of a lot of cuts to Medicaid spending.
Chapter 4: What executive orders are influencing the healthcare landscape?
I don't know if that's real or if they're able to do that, but some of those sound draconians so far will have a big impact on investors. But take a moment on 13-14 vote. What does that mean? Does that mean it passed 14-13? What does that mean in the Senate Finance Committee, that vote, if anything? And what are people saying about – I mean obviously I have my own opinions about RFK Jr.
Chapter 5: What potential Medicaid cuts should investors be aware of?
and Dr. Oz. But what are people saying about these two nominations, or what does 13-14 mean?
Chapter 6: What are the implications of the Senate Finance Committee vote?
Yeah, so the Senate Finance Committee is comprised of 14 Republicans and 13 Democrats. And that's reflective of the fact that because the Republicans have the majority in the Senate, they get a chairmanship. And so consequently, they control.
And people who had been opposed to the RFK nomination, including very prominently his very well-known family and, of course, Senate Democrats, had been watching Senator Cassidy. He had really been very offended. by Kennedy's anti-vaccine campaign.
And he was the one that many people thought that if they were going to have a Republican defector from the nomination within the Senate Finance Committee, that it might be Senator Cassidy. Turns out he ultimately got comfortable. Robert
Kennedy gave him assurances that he wasn't going to take down the Children's Health Vaccine Program and some other things that are quite precious to Senator Cassidy as a physician. And so ultimately, the Senate Finance Committee voted straight down the line on party lines. So what that means now is it comes out the Senate Finance Committee to go to the whole Senate.
Thank you. OK, now it's a 1413. Got it. Understood. The next question is the vaccines. Like the childhood vaccines, the polio vaccines, all these vaccines. I know there was this incredible amount of controversy over the COVID vaccines. But these other vaccine programs, they must be overwhelmingly very popular in our country. I take it voters must overwhelmingly be very, very positive about them.
You know, you always hear about the very, very sad situation where somebody says their child's autism or something else was caused by a vaccine. And that may be possible that there's a small, small, small percentage of that. And that's a horrible outcome. But overwhelming vaccines and the vaccine programs, I take it, are incredibly popular in our country.
Oh, absolutely. And this is a really interesting moment because you have this. tuberculosis outbreak that's happening in Kansas. And you also have the administration, as part of the proclamations that have been made since January 20th, saying to HHS, your job is to control chronic disease in this world as part of the Make America Healthy Again campaign.
I do not expect there to really be, and this is one of the things that Senator Cassidy really had to get assurances from, is I don't think anybody really expects the rest of the vaccine programs, set aside COVID, to really be impacted, despite all the things that we're seeing, many of which are creating a ton of chaos.
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