Our advocates on Capitol Hill and beyond

The Government Affairs team, led by Melissa Schulman, SVP, has a busy year ahead as it works to ensure policymakers understand our vision for health care. 
• The Government Affairs team works with elected officials to show what we’re doing to lower health care costs, improve health outcomes and simplify the patient experience, she says.

• We recently launched a program to give legislators tours of distribution centers, mail order facilities and CVS Pharmacy stores to showcase the many ways the company supports their communities. 

• "We really want policymakers to see and understand that we're not just this big company, we are the CVS in their neighborhood that’s staffed by their constituents," Melissa says.

Creators and Guests

Host

Matt McGuire

A lifelong writer, editor and content strategist. Senior Manager, Enterprise Communications, CVS Health

What is Big Questions Answered?

Big Questions Answered helps us understand important CVS Health initiatives by taking a closer look at new products, powerful innovations and the big changes the company is making to achieve its strategic imperatives and build a world of health around every consumer. The company's senior leaders answer big questions from host Matt McGuire.

Matt McGuire
With 2026 being an election year at both state and federal levels, health care is naturally at the forefront of campaign discussions — covering everything from prescription costs to the price of hospital stays.

Fortunately, CVS Health has advocates at both the state and federal level to explain our purpose: To simplify health care one person, one family and one community at a time. And this commitment drives our efforts to make health care more accessible and affordable.

On this episode, we’ll learn how the Government Affairs team engages policymakers to show how our initiatives benefit not only the company but our patients and clients as well. We’ll hear how they give tours to legislators so they can witness many ways the company supports their community and constituents at local distribution centers, mail order facilities and more. And we’ll learn what the Government Affairs team’s top priorities are as they head into the new year.

Welcome to Big Questions Answered, a podcast that helps us understand the important initiatives at CVS Health. I’m Matt McGuire from the Enterprise Communications team. I’ll be your host as we dive into the latest developments, breakthroughs and innovations that are helping us achieve our ambition to become America’s most trusted health care company. Thanks for joining me today as we get our big questions answered.

We're kicking off 2026 with a fascinating guest: Melissa Schulman, the Senior Vice President of Government Affairs at CVS Health. Melissa and her team lead the company's lobbying, regulatory and advocacy efforts across all 50 States and in Washington, DC. She works with Congress, the Executive branch, and key stakeholders to advance policies that improve access to care and support healthier communities.

Melissa, thank you for stopping by.

Melissa Schulman
Happy to be here.

Matt McGuire
So, Melissa, I'm extremely interested in the work that you and your team do to shape health care policy. To start, how does Government Affairs team advise and support the company's vision for health care?

Melissa Schulman
So it's a great question, and I get asked that question a lot. So, I think the easiest way to explain what Government Affairs is and why we exist is if you think about our company purpose — and our new purpose to simplify health care, one person, one family, one community at a time — our purpose in helping the company fulfill its purpose is to make sure that there's a public policy environment that supports our business’s strategy and our intention in making our purpose come to life. It's really at the end of the day that simple. We're here to make sure we can do that which we think is best for our customers, for consumers, for patients, for our clients.

And, so, we work at the both the federal level and the state level trying to tell policymakers the CVS Health story, making sure that they understand what we're doing to simplify health care — make it more accessible, make it more affordable — and as they're considering either the words of our opponents or they're thinking about new policies, changes to laws, regulations, et cetera, that they understand what the impact would be not only on our company as a company but the impact on our company in terms of our ability to make health care more affordable and more accessible.

So oftentimes when we're talking to policymakers about a policy proposal, it's not so much, well, this would be bad for CVS Caremark or Aetna. It's like, no, this would be bad for employers who are trying to control health care costs so they can continue to provide coverage for their employees. No, that's not a great idea because you're actually allowing manufacturers to have more of a free rein to continue egregious price increases.

Or, conversely, that's a great idea because that is going to help bring more competition to the market, which is going to help lower costs. So, we're not only telling our story and our intention, but also, we do a lot of translating and speaking on behalf of either the patients that we serve or the clients that we serve.

Matt McGuire
This is great. I'm happy to hear you talk about costs and affordability because we're seeing in the news that there are a lot of concerns about the cost of health care. And I'm curious, how does Government Affairs help those in Congress understand how our solutions and services help control those costs?

Melissa Schulman
Yeah, you're absolutely right. It seems every time we turn around, and fairly so, that politicians and consumers are concerned about affordability and particularly concerned about affordability in health care. Obviously, there have been some massive legislation that has passed that is going to change the waterfront for a lot of folks in terms of their coverage or their access to coverage. So those are concerns that we share.

From the aspect of we want to make sure that health care is affordable for consumers and for employers and for government payors. And, so, we spend quite a bit of time on Capitol Hill and in the state legislatures talking about the things that are actually driving the cost of care and what we, particularly as an integrated company, can do to help bring those health care costs down.

And we know that there is a value to our integration that comes to life with reduced health care costs, with reduced emergency room visits — we're able to provide care at a lower cost site of care, for example. And, so, all of the things that we're doing as a company, including the way that we are taking health care technology and really investing in that and expanding on its use to help again, make health care more affordable, more accessible, but most importantly also to make it more simple. All of those things together are things that we're doing and that we talk about with legislators when we talk about affordability and what our role is.

So, there are a lot of misconceptions about large integrated companies. There are a lot of misconceptions about portions of our business like everybody's seen every anti-PBM ad that they seem somehow to be able to afford to show during the Super Bowl and everything else. And, so, we spend a lot of time explaining how the market really works, how drug pricing negotiations work, what a rebate really is, which is a discount, how we don't keep them, they go back to the clients and how much of benefit design, which is the employer's or the client's choice influences how the person standing at the pharmacy counter experiences their cost. Similarly, we spend a lot of time explaining what the larger drivers of increases in medical costs are.

And as we're seeing hospitals and others come to us with substantial price increases as we're doing our negotiation for the network, that's part of the information that we try to share with policymakers so they understand where the costs are coming from that are really driving the premium or what decisions are driving how the consumer, their constituent, experiences is their cost. Because when it comes to a politician, they're interested in the overall health care cost to the system, and those who are more policy wonky can spend a lot of time having a deep conversation about that. But for your average legislator who is not steeped in health care policy, they think about cost as the way it affects their individual constituent. So, it's the kitchen table conversation around health care costs, not the overall cost to the United States. And that's something that, again, we really try to bring to policymakers of the innovations that we've tried to bring to market to encourage clients to experience or to take on that help reduce the cost for the consumers.

We spend a lot of time talking about the innovations, for example, that we're making on prior authorization through Aetna to talk about how we're trying to make that patient experience, and quite frankly, the doctor's experience easier and more seamless. And, so, we're forever bringing the innovations that we come up with to the policymakers.

We've recently started a really invigorated program where we are bringing policymakers into CVS Pharmacy, to our distribution center, to our large mail order facility. Because we really want policymakers to see and understand that we're not just this big company. We are the CVS in their neighborhood that’s staffed by their constituents. And chances are the pharmacist behind the counter went to pharmacy school in that state. And that pharmacist probably has family and cousins and aunts and uncles and whatnot in that community. And that we are of the community. And, so, we've been doing that by literally bringing the legislators in or taking our pharmacists to go meet with the legislators in their offices.

And it's in those conversations that policymakers can get a much better firsthand experience of what we're doing in CVS Pharmacy to help their constituents control their costs, whether it's helping their constituent find a more affordable drug, helping their constituent find a discount that they can be using or simply being a lower-cost site of care because there's a lot of care that our pharmacists can provide. All of those things are also about trying to talk to the policymakers about the different ways we intersect with folks every day to help reduce costs for their constituents. That was a lot, but the team does a lot.

Matt McGuire
No, but that's great. I mean, yeah, absolutely. And it's, it's, it's nice to hear about talking with legislators and policymakers about their communities because we just released our first economic impact report in December, and it illustrates how we’re partners for health care delivery across the U.S. And I'm curious, what's been the reaction so far from policymakers as they understand how we're showing up locally?

Melissa Schulman
So, I think the economic impact report has been a huge revelation. And one of the things that we're trying to do with that is to help policymakers — and quite frankly other stakeholders in the cities and the states in which we operate — understand the importance of having a viable CVS in their state. And it's not just the jobs we're creating with the folks that we're hiring, but it's also the ripple effect of the fact that we are employing people there, that we're buying things in the state, that we're doing business in the state because that creates jobs and opportunities for others. And, so, for example, we have 300,000-plus employees, but we actually support 1.3 million jobs nationwide. Our overall economic impact to the country is $474 billion.

And so the multiplier effect of who and what we are is really pretty extraordinary. And as we're going to be celebrating the 250th anniversary of the country this year, for an American company like CVS that is all about being a company in the United States of America, we felt it was really timely to tell that story and to make it more aware. And, so, I would say by and large, people have been surprised. They're sometimes surprised by how many people we have in their state, just us. But then as they begin to understand that multiplier effect, it has been surprise.

Matt McGuire
Well, count me among them. I feel like I know the company reasonably well, and even I was surprised and impressed by some of those numbers, especially that we support 1.3 million jobs nationwide and that our annual economic impact is $474 billion. So, Melissa, during your days on the Hill, you played a key role in getting the Americans with Disabilities Act passed. Can you tell me about that time?

Melissa Schulman
So it is funny that that is your question today because I spent the morning on Capitol Hill today because the sponsor of that legislation, Congressman Steny Hoyer, was announcing his retirement from Congress, which was a pretty emotional morning, to be honest. But if Congressman Hoyer is asked what his biggest accomplishment is, and this is a guy who has done amazing things in his time in Congress — he's the public servant we all wish we had — but his proudest achievement, he will tell you, is the Americans with Disabilities Act. And my answer, other than my family, is exactly the same. And, so, it was a different time than it is now. This was legislation that was negotiated in a very bipartisan fashion. It went through a strenuous legislative process, particularly on the House side.

And it's the 35th anniversary. And so we now have people with disabilities, who have grown up in a country that is completely different than the people before them experienced. And when I talked to people who were maybe in elementary school when it passed by the time they got to high school and college, it was just such a such a different world.

And, so, it is rare to have the ability and the experience to work on to work on something so important, but I consider it, as I said, one of my, certainly my greatest professional accomplishment, all due respect to CVS Health, which I adore, but I work with the our CapAbilities CRG. And they asked me to come and be one of the executive sponsors because of that experience. And to have the privilege to work with that group here as we think about ways to continue to make CVS Health accessible, not only for our customers but also for our colleagues, and to make CVS Health a place of choice for folks with disabilities is it's sort of like a just a natural next chapter to what I did on the Hill, and I feel very fortunate to have had both experiences.

Matt McGuire
Yeah, CapAbilities is an excellent Colleague Resource Group, and I sat in on a panel discussion you hosted with them — very moving and insightful. So, Melissa, between Government Affairs, CapAbilities, a life outside of work, you’ve got a ton going on. If you’re anything like me, you need some energizing in the morning. I’m curious, when you’re driving into work, what do you have on the radio?

Melissa Schulman
So, first of all, I am very fortunate to have one of the best Government Affairs team, not only in the industry, but I think pretty much generally in corporate America. And, so, anything that I get credit for, it is completely our team. It's a group of amazing colleagues who work with folks all across the company to make what we do happen. And I am deeply, deeply grateful for who I've got supporting the work that we're able to do.

But, if I'm driving into work in the morning, chances are I've got the NHL Hockey channel on, and I'm getting the update on the latest standings and the games the night before. I'm a deep, deep hockey fan, first and foremost. If it's women's soccer season, chances are I'm also looking for news around the Washington Spirit, who we are the corporate sponsors of. They're the national women's team here in Washington, DC. But if I'm in the mood for music, chances are it's Taylor Swift. And so that's pretty much what I did. One of those at Spotify tells you, you know what you've listened to the most. And yes, I am in in the top, like, 6% globally of Taylor Swift listening. So, I think that's really the most honest answer.

Matt McGuire
I get it. And if you and my daughter ever went on a road trip, you’d both be very happy with the music settings.

Melissa Schulman
Be very, I'm sure we would be very happy.

Matt McGuire
Yes. So, looking ahead, what are the Government Affairs team's top priorities in 2026?

Melissa Schulman
So, our priorities very much align with what the business priorities are. So, we will likely spend this year, which is also going to be an election year — we will spend this year defending our ability to have, and our ability to be, an integrated company and to protect the benefits of our integrated model. Medicare Advantage, which is a very important part of our company, continues to be under a tremendous amount of scrutiny on Capitol Hill and from some of the some outside stakeholders as well. So, we will be focusing on Medicare Advantage and working to build the program and to make sure that it doesn't get deteriorated and that beneficiaries aren't losing benefits.

We will continue to be promoting our pharmacists and CVS Pharmacy and the importance of our pharmacy in the community. And then no one will be shocked to hear we will probably be spending some time on drug pricing and defending the incredible work that Caremark does to try to control drug prices. Our Health Care Delivery business is really tied in a lot of ways to our Medicare Advantage business, but our continuing evolution in Retail Health and moving more into a primary care provider is something that is of interest to several states, so the state team will also definitely be spending some time on that.

Matt McGuire
Sounds like Government Affairs has a busy year ahead. Melissa, I really appreciate you stopping by. This has been one of those conversations I’ve been hoping to have for a while. Thank you.

Melissa Schulman
Thanks for having me.

Matt McGuire
And a big thanks to you for tuning in to this episode. Until next time, I'm Matt McGuire. I look forward to joining you again to get more big questions answered.