White House Urged to Name 'CEO' to Run Obamacare
Sunday, 29 Dec 2013 07:06 AM
The White House is coming under
pressure from some of its closest allies on healthcare reform to name a chief
executive to run its federal health insurance marketplace and allay the
concerns of insurers after the rocky rollout of Obamacare.
Advocates have been quietly
pushing the idea of a CEO who would set marketplace rules, coordinate with
insurers and state regulators on the health plans offered for sale, supervise
enrollment campaigns and oversee technology, according to several sources
familiar with discussions between advocates and the Obama administration.
Supporters of the idea say it
could help regain the trust of insurers and others whose confidence in the
healthcare overhaul has been shaken by the technological woes that crippled the
federal HealthCare.gov insurance
shopping website and the flurry of sometimes-confusing administration rule
changes that followed.
The advocates include former White
House adviser Ezekiel Emanuel, the
brother of President Barack Obama's former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, and the Center
for American Progress, the Washington
think tank founded by John Podesta,
the president's newly appointed senior counselor.
The White House is not embracing
the idea of creating a CEO, administration officials said.
"This isn't happening. It's
not being considered," a senior administration official told Reuters.
Some healthcare reform allies say
the complexity of the federal marketplace requires a CEO-type figure with clear
authority and knowledge of how insurance markets work.
Obama's healthcare overhaul aims
to provide health coverage to millions of uninsured or under-insured Americans
by offering private insurance at federally subsidized rates through new online
health insurance marketplaces in all 50 states and in Washington, D.C.
Only 14 states opted to create and
operate their own exchanges, leaving the Obama administration to operate a
federal marketplace for the remaining 36 states that can be accessed through
HealthCare.gov.
The marketplace is now officially
the responsibility of the U.S.
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid
Services (CMS) and its administrator, Marilyn Tavenner. Healthcare experts
say there is no specific official dedicated to running the operation.
A CMS spokesman said exchange
functions overlap across different groups within the agency's Center for
Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight.
The lack of a clear decision-making
hierarchy was identified as a liability months before the disastrous Oct. 1
launch of HealthCare.gov by the consulting firm McKinsey & Co.
Obama adviser Jeffrey Zients, who
rescued the website from crippling technical glitches last month, also identified
the lack of effective management as a problem.
POTENTIAL CEO CANDIDATES
Former Microsoft executive Kurt
DelBene has replaced Zients as website manager, at least through the first half
of 2014.
"We're fortunate that Kurt
DelBene is now part of the administration - there's no one better able to help
us keep moving forward to make affordable, quality health insurance available
to as many Americans as possible," Obama healthcare adviser Phil Schiliro
said in a statement to Reuters.
The White House appears, for now,
to be concentrating on ironing out the remaining glitches in HealthCare.gov to
ensure millions more people are able to sign up for coverage in 2014. Good
enrollment numbers are seen by both critics and supporters of Obamacare as a
key measure of the program's success.
"So my sense is that they're
not thinking about appointing a CEO in the short term," said Topher Spiro,
a healthcare analyst with the Center for American Progress.
The CEO proposal calls for
removing day-to-day control of the marketplace from the CMS bureaucracy and
placing it under a leadership structure like those used in some of the more
successful state-run marketplaces, including California.
The new team would be managed by a
CEO, or an executive director, who would run the marketplace like a business
and answer directly to the White House, sources familiar with the discussions
say.
They point to insurance industry
and healthcare veterans as potential candidates, including former Aetna CEO
Ronald Williams, former Kaiser Permanente CEO George Halvorson and Jon
Kingsdale, who ran the Massachusetts
health exchange established under former Governor Mitt Romney's 2006 healthcare
reforms. None of the three was available for comment.
Healthcare experts say the idea
should have been taken up by the administration years ago.
"It's the right thing to do.
It's just two years late," said Mike Leavitt, the Republican former Utah governor who oversaw the rollout of the prescription
drug program known as Medicare Part D as U.S. health and human services
secretary under President George W. Bush.
"The administration is
confronted by a series of problems they cannot solve on their own. They do not
possess internally the competencies or the exposure or the information,"
he told Reuters.
Emanuel, one of the
administration's longest-standing allies on healthcare reform, recommended a
marketplace CEO in an Oct. 22 Op-Ed article in the New York Times, calling it
one of five things the White House could do to fix Obamacare.
"The candidate should have
management experience, knowledge of how both the government and health
insurance industry work, and at least some familiarity with IT (information
technology) systems. Obviously this is a tall order, but there are such people.
And the administration needs to hire one immediately," he wrote.
The administration has adopted
Emanuel's four other recommendations: better window-shopping features for
HealthCare.gov; a concerted effort to win back public trust; a focus on the
customer shopping experience; and a public outreach campaign to engage young
adults.
John Podesta
John
D. Podesta is a counselor for the Barack
Obama administration, and the chair & counselor for the Center for American Progress.
Note: Tom Daschle is a director at the Center for American Progress, was the nominee for health and human services secretary for the Barack Obama administration, a special policy adviser at Alston & Bird, and a 2008 Bilderberg conference
participant (think tank).
Donald M. Berwick
is a senior fellow at the Center for
American Progress, and was an administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
Thomas A. Scully
is a senior counsel at Alston & Bird,
and was an administrator for the Centers
for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
Timothy P. Trysla
is a partner at Alston & Bird, and
was a senior policy adviser to the administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
Paula Stannard is
counsel at Alston & Bird, and was
the acting general counsel for the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services.
Centers
for Medicare & Medicaid Services is a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Neera
Tanden was the senior adviser for health reform for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and is the president
for the Center for American Progress.
Open
Society Foundations was a funder for the Center for American Progress.
George
Soros is the founder & chairman for the Open Society Foundations, the chairman for the Foundation to Promote Open Society, and was a supporter for the Center for American Progress.
Foundation
to Promote Open Society was a funder for the Center for American Progress, and the Committee for Economic Development.
Ezekiel Emanuel
is a senior fellow at the Center for
American Progress, Rahm I. Emanuel’s brother, and was the health care policy adviser for the Barack Obama administration.
Rahm
I. Emanuel is Ezekiel Emanuel’s brother,
a member of the Commercial Club of
Chicago, the Chicago (IL) mayor,
and was the White House chief of staff for the Barack Obama administration.
Commercial Club of Chicago,
Members Directory A-Z (Past Research)
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
R.
Eden Martin is the president of the Commercial
Club of Chicago, and counsel at Sidley
Austin LLP.
Michelle
Obama was a lawyer at Sidley Austin
LLP.
Barack
Obama was an intern at Sidley Austin
LLP, and Melody C. Barnes is his
golf partner.
Melody
C. Barnes is Barack Obama’s golf
partner, and was the EVP for the Center
for American Progress.
Newton
N. Minow is a senior counsel at Sidley
Austin LLP, and a member of the Commercial
Club of Chicago.
W. James
McNerney Jr. is a member of the Commercial
Club of Chicago, and the chairman & president & CEO for the Boeing Company.
William
M. Daley is a member of the Commercial
Club of Chicago, was the chief of staff for the Barack Obama administration, and a director at the Boeing Company.
Barbara G. Fast
was a VP at the Boeing Company, and
a VP for the CGI Group Inc.
CGI Group Inc.
was the Obamacare contractor that
developed Healthcare.gov web site.
Obamacare
is Barack Obama’s signature policy
initiative.
Donna
S. Morea was the EVP for the CGI
Group Inc., and a trustee at the Committee
for Economic Development.
Donna
E. Shalala is a trustee at the Committee
for Economic Development, and was the secretary for the U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services.
Centers
for Medicare & Medicaid Services is a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Neera
Tanden was the senior adviser for health reform for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and is the president
for the Center for American Progress.
John
D. Podesta is the chair & counselor for the Center for American Progress, and a counselor for the Barack Obama administration.
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