Impact

You would have thought that things would calm down on the health policy beat after the disappointing election results, but it has been as crazy busy as ever! We’ve presented testimonies and written five papers for state legislatures on Medicaid, spoken to business groups, and organized briefings and conference calls to advance positive solutions to address the entitlement tsunami facing our country. Read on for highlights.

In addition, Grace-Marie was honored by being named by House Speaker John Boehner as one of his three nominees to the Long Term Care Commission. She served in 2005-06 on the Medicaid Commission during the Bush administration so this will be a new opportunity to inject market-based policy solutions into the debate.

Publications

We have written papers on the 12 reasons states should not expand Medicaid, tailored to Virginia, Florida, Tennessee, Ohio, with a fifth paper aggregating all of our arguments. National Review Online published a commentary based upon the papers we wrote with Avik Roy of the Manhattan Institute, “Twelve Reasons to say no to Medicaid expansion.”

Grace-Marie Turner’s commentary, “Affordable Care Act will impose new burdens on consumers, businesses,” was published in more than 30 papers around the country and the world, including The Orange County Register, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, the Kansas City Star and overseas publications, together reaching more than 5 million readers.

Forbes magazine published Grace-Marie’s commentary on actions in Congress to block harm from the health overhaul law, “With ObamaCare’s Repeal Blocked, Congress Works to Dismantle and Defund It.”

National Review Online published Grace-Marie’s commentary “A Wise and Workable Strategy for Replacing Obamacare.”

NRO also published Grace-Marie’s commentary “Eye-popping Costs for Employer-Provided Health Insurance.”

Investor’s Business Daily published Grace-Marie’s commentary on “Obamacare still violates religious rights”

We wrote for NRO a piece on the HHS mandate and why the Obama administration’s latest rule is no accommodation at all: “The HHS Mandate Isn’t Fixed”.

We wrote a commentary for The Hill, “Part D Can Be a Model for Medicare Reform”.

And we also wrote for Forbes a column about “How sensationalist claims undermine responsible federal budgeting.”

We published a dozen posts to the Galen website including: “Why health costs are rising!” “Saving Medicare: A market cure for an ailing program,” “ObamaCare sticker shock: It gets worse,” “House Republican leaders offer solution to depleted pre-existing condition fund,” and “Hot off the presses: 21-page ObamaCare application.”

And our most popular offering was a series of links in “ObamaCare Illustrated” that visualized the bureaucracy of the law, including long application forms and a 7-foot-tall stack of the 20,000 pages of regulations written so far to implement the law.

Galen in the News

We hit the airwaves with interviews on The Steve Malzberg Show, The Small Business Advocate, The Drew Mariani Show, The Joe Thomas Show, Radio America, and City on a Hill. Grace-Marie also was interviewed during a speaking visit in Kentucky about the impact of the new health law on premiums and patient access to care. She spoke about resistance to ObamaCare on Atlanta’s Butler on Business, as well as appearing twice onThe Kudlow Report on CNBC.

Speeches and briefings

Grace-Marie spoke about “The Future of Free Market Healthcare” at the Tennessee Association of Health Underwriters Symposium, and she also spoke in Lexington, KY, to the Central Kentucky Association of Health Underwriters.

At a briefing on Capitol Hill organized by the House Pro-Life Caucus, Grace-Marie spoke about the threat to religious liberty from the HHS mandate.

Grace-Marie testified before the Tennessee House and Senate regarding the dangers of Medicaid expansion and how it would affect Tennessee.

Galen hosted, with the American Enterprise Institute and The Heritage Foundation, two Capitol Hill briefings: “What to do when ObamaCare fails” featuring Tom Miller, AEI, Jim Capretta, Ethics and Public Policy Center, and Nina Owcharenko of Heritage; and “Should States Expand Medicaid?” with Joe Antos of AEI and Grace-Marie.

We connected with members of our State Leaders Group during two conference calls we co-hosted with the Institute for Policy Innovation and the State Policy Network: the first, featuring Avik Roy of the Manhattan Institute and Chris Conover from Duke University on “States and the Medicaid Expansion Trap,” and the second featuring healthcare actuary Mark Litow and Merrill Matthews of the Institute for Policy Innovation, who discussed inevitable premium increases under ObamaCare and how they will affect the states, businesses, and citizens.

We also continue our outreach with grassroots organizations with our “Pro-Patient Minute” dispatches.

Events and Meetings

Grace-Marie met with numerous state officials during two trips to Tennessee, testifying at the invitation of Rep. Jeremy Durham and Sen. Brian Kelsey, and meeting with House Speaker Beth Howell and Governor Bill Haslam to discuss Medicare expansion alternatives for Tennessee. We worked in close partnership with the Beacon Center of Tennessee in arranging the meetings.

Grace-Marie organized a meeting between health policy colleagues and officials of the Patient Centers Outcomes Research Institute.

Grace-Marie met with John Mackey of Whole Foods during a forum at Cato featuring his new book, Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business.

Grace-Marie met with Utah Gov. Gary Herbert about Utah’s likely losing battle to have its exchange approved as ObamaCare compliant.

Grace-Marie attended, with other colleagues, a briefing with Texas A&M Private Enterprise Research Center scholars Thomas Saving and Andrew Rettenmaier on sensible Medicare reform.

Grace-Marie attended a conference at AEI, “Big health: Consolidation and competition under the Affordable Care Act.”

We attended several meetings of the Repeal Coalition on Capitol Hill and attended numerous meetings with congressional staffers to discuss specific policy proposals on entitlement reform.

Grace-Marie attended the CPAC conference in Washington, DC, in March including the Ronald Reagan dinner featuring former Florida Governor Jeb Bush.

We attended numerous other meetings to discuss new initiatives and health policy ideas with government officials, industry leaders, member associations, and other policy experts.