Trump nominee Ge Bai pushes to replace employer health plans with HSAs

President Donald Trump has nominated Ge Bai to lead policy planning at the Department of Health and Human Services, where she will advise Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Bai is a long-time proponent of deregulating the employer-sponsored health insurance market, urging that companies fund health savings accounts instead of traditional plans. She believes this shift would lower costs by eliminating middlemen and encouraging cash-price competition for routine services.

Bai, a tenured professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and former adviser to the Paragon Health Institute, will testify before the Senate Finance Committee, where lawmakers will probe the impact of her proposals on health-care affordability. Her ideas echo recent Republican support for expanding HSAs, while Democrats warn that such measures may not guarantee universal access. Confirmation would place her at the helm of the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, a unit that reviews major HHS policies and can launch or halt multi-million-dollar pilot programs.