UNITED STATES - April 15: Chiquita Brooks-LaSure testifies before the Senate Finance Committee during her nomination hearing to be administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in Washington on Thursday, April 15, 2021. (Photo by Caroline Brehman/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
Chiquita Brooks-LaSure was one of Washington’s heavyweight power players. She ran the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the federal agency that oversees Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act marketplaces. That meant she was responsible for programs that touched the lives of more than 150 million Americans and controlled over a trillion dollars in annual spending. That kind of budget and political reach affected the entire U.S. healthcare system.
Her influence was especially strong because CMS was at the center of major market and policy shifts, such as drug-price negotiations, the expansion of value-based care, Medicaid redeterminations, and the push to modernize how healthcare is delivered and paid for. When CMS updated a rule or payment model, hospitals, insurers, drug companies, and state governments had to adjust.
Brooks-LaSure also played a key role in making coverage more accessible and stable amid economic and political uncertainty. Her decisions lowered costs for families, reshaped industry incentives, and set the tone for national health policy.
