Grassley puts teeth back into Finance Committee

Under the leadership Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), the Senate Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over Medicaid, has a renewed focus on health care investigations. This aligns with Sen. Grassley’s longstanding skepticism of the business practices of non-profit hospitals and long-term care facilities.

As mentioned in Politico Pro:

No lawmaker has consistently devoted more resources to oversight than Grassley. His seven-person oversight team shifted over from the Judiciary Committee when Grassley gave up the chairmanship of that panel for Finance, and now has more than two-dozen open investigations. Five other staffers regularly review watchdog reports and identify policy proposals. Hatch, in contrast, had two lawyers conducting oversight at any given time — one of which was focused on health care, said two people with knowledge of the committee’s operations.

“We have the bandwidth to do policy writing and oversight at the same time,” said one Grassley staffer.

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