Since the inception of Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), affiliated health care stakeholders have experimented with various methods to help them achieve their goal of coordinating high-quality and cost-efficient care. ACOs were first implemented within the Medicare payment system in 2012, and ACO leaders continue to test care delivery transformation innovations to enable further opportunities for […]

Last week, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced what Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar called “an historic turning point in American health care:” the Primary Cares Initiative. This series of primary care-focused payment models—designed to transform primary care payments more directly to reward value—will test five new payment model options […]

Amidst a constant stream of new health care headlines and developments, sound bites on health care from 2020 candidates, and state and federal health care policy activity, which are the stories and the signals that matter? In February, Leavitt Partners launched its first Market Signals Briefing webinar—a new bimonthly webinar series produced by Health Intelligence […]

Health care was a central issue in this year’s midterm elections. In the days after the election, many have speculated on what the results mean for U.S. health care policy. Since the Republicans maintained control of the Senate, while the Democrats took control of the House, some see the next two years as a time […]

Early this year former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers made a case for taxing sugary drinks and cigarettes to deter individuals from consuming products that lead to obesity and chronic disease. Taxing such products could gain importance as policy makers consider comprehensive coverage policies such as “Medicare for all.” The reason is based both on principle […]

As we noted in July, CMS declined Massachusetts’ Medicaid 1115 demonstration request to establish a closed formulary.  The proposed program would have given Massachusetts the ability to exclude certain FDA-approved drugs from coverage and thereby given the state additional leverage in negotiating rebates.  The state and drug manufacturers would have otherwise continued to be subject […]

As the United States continues to move toward a value-based health care system, significant challenges slow down our progress. Political pressure exists from all sides, incentives have yet to be appropriately aligned, and the pressing need to change stakeholder behavior remains a time-sensitive imperative. Solving these challenges requires going beyond admiring the challenges to implementing […]

For the second year in a row, Leavitt Partners presented on diabetes prevention at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) annual carrier conference. The presentation was made on behalf of the National Association of Chronic Disease Directors (NACDD) and alongside the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Division of Diabetes Translation (DDT). OPM’s Federal […]