Article By JULIE ROVNER

Excerpt

Julie Rovner: I am pleased to welcome to the podcast Jeff Grant, most recently the deputy director for operations at CCIIO, the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight, at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Jeff retired last month after 41 years in government, following the firing of 15% of his staff. Now he’s starting a consulting firm that will try to help those being let go from the government find new jobs. Jeff Grant, thank you so much for joining us.

Jeff Grant: Oh thanks for having me.

Rovner: So you were a career employee at CMS. Tell us what you did and how that would normally change between administrations. Obviously, you were there 40 years. You’ve seen a lot of administrations come and go.

Grant: So I was actually at CMS for just under 30 years, and then I had Navy and Navy Reserve experience prior to that and a little bit at Commerce and GAO [the Government Accountability Office], but was all over CMS. My last job was running operations for the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight. So I was a deputy center director. I reported to the political appointee that ran the center, and I was in charge of our major operations, like HealthCare.gov, getting payments out to health plans that provided care for folks that registered in the private insurance marketplace, running things like the risk adjustment program.