30 Mar ICYMI: BPC Hosts National Effort to Find Common Ground on Health Care Reform in Health

Washington, D.C.– The Bipartisan Policy Center is intensifying its efforts to serve as a resource to policymakers and to develop effective and politically viable solutions to our nation’s health care challenges. BPC has convened a bipartisan group of leading national health policy experts to identify a path forward for a consensus approach to improving health care in the United States.

“No one disputes that there are big problems in our health care system,” stated BPC President Jason Grumet. “Congress and the administration should stop fighting over the R-word: reform, repeal, replace, resurrect, rehabilitate, restore, remand, repair, reconsider—it doesn’t matter as long as we improve care and make it more affordable. The one thing our leaders must not do is let the health insurance market fail in the hopes of hanging blame on one another. The American people deserve better.”

This effort is co-chaired by former Senate Majority Leaders Tom Daschle and Bill Frist; BPC senior advisor and former acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Andy Slavitt; and senior fellow, Project Hope and former administrator of the Health Care Financing Administration Gail Wilensky. They are collaborating with BPC’s team of health policy experts which includes: Sheila Burke, BPC fellow and strategic advisor, Baker Donelson; Jim Capretta, resident fellow, Milton Friedman chair, American Enterprise Institute; Chris Jennings, BPC fellow and founder and president, Jennings Policy Strategies; Cindy Mann, partner, Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP and former director of the Center for Medicaid; Alice Rivlin, senior fellow, Center for Health Policy, The Brookings Institution, and former director of the Office of Management and Budget; and Avik Roy, BPC senior advisor and co-founder and president, Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity.

The bipartisan group of experts is traveling across the country, convening leaders in the health care sector, engaging public dialogue through private and public educational events, and serving as a resource to policymakers and business leaders as they wrestle with health care reforms impacting their activities and the people they serve.

BPC’s work will build upon a series of common themes that have animated both parties’ health care proposals, such as:

• Policies that promote stable private insurance markets and include pre-existing condition protections
• Value-based benefit designs that incentivize delivery of medically appropriate care
• Reforms that increase the efficiency of service delivery through appropriate combinations of both public and private incentives while improving the nation’s long-term fiscal position
• Approaches to affordability that do not over-subsidize higher-income Americans or under-subsidize lower-income Americans
• Medicaid policies that expand administrative flexibility without creating financial risk for states, the federal government, or the beneficiaries of the program

In February, BPC convened a series of discussions titled The Future of Health Care. The first event of the series was held on February 3, 2017, and focused on federal budgets and state choices. The second event will focus on the state and federal roles in insurance regulation. Future forums will address a range of topics, including innovations in health care delivery and payment reform and the state and federal roles in Medicaid. The series is designed to help policymakers gain a common understanding of the underlying challenges in health care and considerations for reform.

Over the next month, BPC will begin a series of roundtable discussions—the first of which will be held in California—to discuss Medicaid and marketplace stability with system leaders. The second discussion will take place in Washington, D.C., with health leaders from state agencies and other stakeholder experts to discuss Medicaid and state innovation, among other topics. Other roundtables will be held across the country with state leaders, health system and health insurers CEOs with a focus on health care delivery and payment reform and the role of plans and providers in their communities.

This effort builds on BPC’s robust heath care work that began in 2007 under the leadership of its founders, former Senate Majority Leaders Howard Baker, Tom Daschle, Bob Dole, and George Mitchell.

Highlights of BPC’s recent work can be found here.