Washington, D.C. — This week, Chris Klomp, Trump’s nominee for Deputy Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), is heading to the Hill to appear before the Senate Finance Committee and the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP). Klomp, a former health care executive, has been a main player behind the scenes of the Trump administration’s sabotage agenda, helping orchestrate the cruelest health care cuts in American history and the most corrupt corporate giveaways to big drug companies. He has fought to rip away care from millions, gaslighted Americans about prescription drug costs, and created policies that have made life harder for moms, patients, and seniors.
Protect Our Care Chair Leslie Dach released the following statement:
“You might not know his name, but Chris Klomp is one of the key architects behind Trump’s sabotage agenda. This is the guy grinning next to Donald Trump in the Oval Office as another round of TrumpRx sham deals is announced. He’s the guy closing shady backroom deals with big drug companies, helping them rake in record-breaking profits while jacking up drug prices for seniors. He’s the guy fighting for additional health care cuts, even after Republicans slashed over $1 trillion from health care to fund tax breaks for billionaires and big corporations. He’s going after the care that working families need most by limiting how states access Medicaid funding and potentially ripping another $680 billion from our hospitals. His policies have ignited a health care crisis, raising costs, ripping away care, and pushing our health care system to the brink. Making him second-in-command at HHS is only going to make the GOP health care crisis worse.”
Background:
Former health care executive Chris Klomp has been described as “DOGE without the drama” for his behind-the-scenes efforts at HHS, but the reality is he has been the architect behind many of the Trump administration’s harshest health care cuts and most corrupt corporate giveaways:
Klomp Has Been The Trump Administration’s Point Person On Trump’s “Most-Favored-Nation” and TrumpRx Drug Pricing Deals. Klomp led Trump’s push to negotiate lower prescription drug prices under the “most-favored-nation” model. Trump has publicly praised Klomp’s role in the deals, calling him “unbelievable, a real star” during an April Oval Office event announcing a pricing deal with drugmaker Regeneron. TrumpRx failed to save the vast majority of Americans a single penny and Trump and Klomp’s backroom “deals” offer no details on how they’d save money for patients and have a history of only enriching drug companies and Trump himself.
Klomp Is One Of The Masterminds Behind The Trump Administration’s Plans To Slash Hundreds Of Billions More In Medicaid Funding For Hospitals. After slashing over $1 trillion from Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to fund tax breaks for billionaires and big corporations, Klomp has been working behind the scenes to deepen cuts by limiting two of the main ways that states fund Medicaid: provider taxes and state-directed payments. Klomp stood alongside Trump at the podium in May when the administration announced plans to expand Medicaid cuts beyond the 2025 reconciliation law, appearing at an event unveiling further cuts to state directed payments — the funding stream hospitals rely on for Medicaid reimbursement. In total, these efforts could result in hundreds of billions in additional federal cuts to Medicaid. As the fallout multiplies exponentially, his rules could make things even worse for working families by going beyond the law and causing hospitals to lose as much as an additional $680 billion.
Klomp Is Pushing To Automatically Enroll Seniors In Privatized Medicare Advantage Plans — A Project 2025 Scheme That Could Cost Trillions. Klomp announced in March that the administration is considering a policy that would automatically enroll Medicare beneficiaries into Medicare Advantage (MA) plans — a key component of the Project 2025 blueprint to dismantle Medicare. The effects of enacting this policy would be a multibillion-dollar annual giveaway to corporations at the expense of Medicare enrollees, taxpayers, and at the expense of Medicare’s financial sustainability. If making MA the default option for enrollees were to expand the proportion of Medicare beneficiaries in MA to 75 percent, the Center for American Progress estimates that “wasteful spending could approach an eye-popping $2 trillion over 10 years.”
Klomp Has Been A Driving Force Behind HHS’s Medicaid “Anti-Fraud” Campaign Targeting Democratic-Led States. Politico reported that Klomp has “been a player in the administration’s push to crack down on fraud in health care,” with HHS in recent months targeting Democratic-led states including California, Hawaiʻi, Minnesota, and New York. While claiming to crack down on fraud, Republicans have consistently rejected efforts to actually reduce it, firing the inspectors responsible for oversight of corporate fraud instead of going after the corporations and executives ripping off American taxpayers. Meanwhile, Donald Trump has pardoned 70+ convicted fraudsters during his time in office, including countless donors, allies, and celebrities, including granting clemency to health care fraudsters convicted of stealing more than $2 billion in taxpayer dollars.