CMS chief Seema Verma on President Trump's telehealth executive order

This is a rush transcript from "Special Report with Bret Baier," August 3, 2020. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

BRET BAIER, ANCHOR: President Trump has signed an executive order expanding telehealth services and making changes to rural health care services. Let's get some thoughts now about what that means from Seema Verma, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Thanks for being here.

SEEMA VERMA, CENTERS FOR MEDICARE AND MEDICAID SERVICES: My pleasure.

BAIER: Can you help our viewers understand what happened with this executive order today?

VERMA: Sure. Well, the executive order was all about President Trump's commitment to people living in rural areas. We know that they've had significant difficulty accessing health care services. Their health care outcomes in a lot of cases are worse. And so one of the things that this executive order did was to try to double down on providing telehealth services. We've been providing telehealth services at a rate and a speed during this pandemic, and the president wants to make that benefit permanent for Medicare recipients, and that's going to be a tremendous boon for people living in rural areas, but also for the entire country.

BAIER: Yes, and he mentioned seniors as well benefiting from this E.O. Here's what he told Chris Wallace last time he sat down.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We got rid of the individual mandates. Preexisting conditions will always be taken care of by me and Republicans, 100 percent.

CHRIS WALLACE, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: But you've been on office three-and-a-half years and you don't have a plan.

TRUMP: We haven't had -- excuse me. You heard me yesterday. We are signing a health care plan within two weeks, a full and complete health care plan that the Supreme Court decision on DACA gave me the right to do. So we're going to solve -- we're going to sign an immigration plan, a health care plan, and various other plans. And nobody will have done what I've doing in the next four weeks.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: Now, obviously, this is different, this telehealth executive order. He teased at the briefing there that at the end of this month now, even though the two weeks was up yesterday, the end of this month is going to be a complete plan. Obviously, you would have to be a part of that, if how it looks. Can you kind of put some parameters on what that looks like?

VERMA: I'm not going to get ahead of the president's announcement, but what I will say is that the president has been delivering on his promises around health care. He talked about making health care more affordable. If we look at Medicare premiums, for example, those are at a historic low, even on the exchanges, premiums are lower. And the president is tackling some of the most difficult issues in our health care system, all trying to bring down the cost of health care. Even things like price transparency, last week we received some historic efforts by the courts siding on behalf of the president trying to address monopolies that have cropped up across the country that are actually increasing costs.

So you're going to hear more about it, but the president is focused on making sure that all Americans have access to affordable health care.

BAIER: There's a lot of criticism from conservatives back in the Obama days about his and his pen and his phone and the executive orders to get things done around Congress. When it comes to health care, that's potentially pretty sticky. So the administration sees in this DACA ruling from the Supreme Court the way to go with executive orders on a big issue like health care?

VERMA: The president is focused on delivering results, and we are going to make sure the actions that he takes are showing results. That's why he's been working on things like price transparency. Already, we have hospitals posting charges. Even on Medicare, so many of the efforts he has made have resulted in lower costs for patients. And even on the exchanges, premiums have gone down as well. So we're focused on actually taking those actions that are going to deliver results for the American people.

BAIER: And you're convinced this executive order, whatever it looks like, is going to be sweeping?

VERMA: I think we have already seen the president's actions already. There's been an enormous number of executive orders, whether it's been on kidney health, on price transparency, on Medicare. And every time he signed an executive order, you've seen the agency deliver action and deliver real results for the American people.

BAIER: We look forward to details and all of that whenever they come, and we appreciate your time today.

VERMA: Thank you.

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