As former majority leaders of the United States Senate, we understand the difficulty of arriving at consensus in our country’s often contentious political environment. Nowhere is this truer than with health care, perhaps the most polarizing domestic policy issue of our time. Health care costs continue to rise, straining the budgets of the American people, along with those of and federal and state governments. And our fragmented health care system fails to deliver the kind of coordinated and interconnected care that both patients and providers want.
Despite significant policy differences, we believe that Republicans and Democrats agree more than they disagree when it comes to health care. We all want a high-performance, high-value health care system with greater access, better quality, and lower cost. In order to achieve this goal, we need a person of integrity and competence at the helm of the Department of Health and Human Services. The good news is that President Trump has nominated just such a person, Alex Azar, who we both have come to know.
The secretary of HHS is one of the most important Cabinet positions in the federal government. The department has a budget of over $1 trillion and 70,000 employees, and its programs touch nearly every American:
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