New bipartisan policy group aims to reform healthcare

Andy Slavitt, who served as Acting Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service in the Obama administration, has convened a high-profile group of public figures to reshape healthcare. 

Slavitt Tweeted on Tuesday: "Today launches a new movement to attempt to get past the politics and get affordable care for every American. The work is just beginning and we need everyone to participate to change things."

Today launches a new movement to attempt to get past the politics and get affordable care for every American.

The work is just beginning and we need everyone to participate to change things.

Check it out! https://t.co/v4dAOmDukU

-- Andy Slavitt (@ASlavitt) February 6, 2018

The effort comes just days after Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan revealed their plans on Jan. 30 to launch a healthcare company, focused on tamping down costs.

United States of Care, too, is focused on lowering the growing cost of care to provide more access.

Among the healthcare policymakers joining the group are:

• Mark McClellan, who served as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services from 2004 through 2006 under president George W. Bush, and today Director of the Robert J Margolis Center for Health Policy and the Margolis Professor of Business, Medicine and Health Policy at Duke University.
• Atul Gawande, a surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, a public health researcher, professor in both the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health and the Department of Surgery at Harvard Medical School.

Also joining the group are actors Bradley Whitford and Andy Richter, and entrepreneur Mark Cuban.

Slavitt has recruited a bipartisan board of directors:

• Steve Beshear, former Democratic governor of Kentucky •Kristie Canegallo, former Obama adviser on the Affordable Care Act.
• Bill Frist, Republican Senate Majority Leader
• Jim Douglas, a former Republican governor of Vermont
• Dave Durenberger, a former Republican Senator from Minnesota
• Bernard Tyson, Chairman and CEO of Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Hospitals
• David Torchiana of Partners Healthcare
• Tony Tersigni, president and CEO of Ascension Health
• Steve Safyer, MD, president and CEO of Montefiore Medical Center
• Judy Rich, president and CEO of Tucson Medical Center
• Patrick Conway, CEO of BlueCross BlueShield of North Carolina
• Dignity Health CEO Lloyd Dean
• Trinity Health CEO Richard Gilfillan
• Providence St. Joseph executive vice president Rhonda Medows, MD

Great to have the support of 152,000 internal medicine physicians and medical students of @ACPinternists for putting #healthcareoverpolitics and @USofCare. pic.twitter.com/FL0J6LF0Bt

-- Andy Slavitt (@ASlavitt) February 6, 2018

Twitter: @Bernie_HITN
Email the writer: bernie.monegain@himssmedia.com