Roughly a dozen Biden administration health officials will mark “Match Day” for medical students on Friday, traveling to different medical schools across the country and speaking about President Biden’s health care agenda.
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra will visit a medical school in Washington, D.C., while other officials will be at medical schools in Philadelphia, Atlanta, Nashville and other cities in Wisconsin, California and North Carolina.
Becerra’s remarks in particular will focus on the administration’s efforts to address maternal health and medical racism, and the importance of investing in a diverse health care workforce, an administration official told The Hill.
Only 5.7 percent of doctors are Black, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.
Match Day is the day medical students learn which hospital they’ll be attending for their residency programs, which typically last several years.
Officials will be at three historically Black colleges or universities (HBCUs).
Becerra will visit Howard University’s School of Medicine in Washington, D.C.; Carole Johnson, administrator at the Health Resources and Services Administration, will visit Meharry Medical College, an HBCU in Nashville; and Antrell Tyson, regional director at HHS, will visit Morehouse School of Medicine, an HBCU in Atlanta.
Angela Ramirez, deputy chief of staff at HHS, will make a stop at Cherokee Nation, home to the nation’s first medical school on tribal land.
The officials are expected to deliver remarks focusing on Biden’s agenda to lower health care costs. Biden in last week’s State of the Union paid particular attention to his efforts to address prescription drug prices and health insurance through protecting the Affordable Care Act.
Biden proposed extending Medicare’s $2,000 annual cap on out-of-pocket drug costs to people with commercial insurance, as well as the law’s penalty on drugmakers who raise prices faster than the rate of inflation.
Biden has also urged Congress to make permanent improvements to the Affordable Care Act that are set to expire in the fall of 2025.