HHS Panel That Aims to Reshape U.S. Healthcare Holds Its First Meeting

A new HHS health advisory committee met very briefly Monday to introduce its members and outline its broad goals for reshaping large parts of the healthcare system.

The Healthcare Advisory Committee, whose existence was announced on March 26, says on its website that its purpose is to “advise HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and CMS Administrator [Mehmet Oz, MD, MBA] on ways to improve how care is financed and delivered across Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program [CHIP], and the [Affordable Care Act] Health Insurance Marketplace. The committee will provide non-binding recommendations to inform federal healthcare policy and program administration.”

The committee’s first meeting, which was livestreamed on Monday afternoon, was slated to run from 2:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. Agenda items included committee member introductions, a bylaws discussion, presentations on the scope of the committee’s six workgroups, and public comments. Despite the assertion by committee chair Clive Fields, MD, that “Our agenda is very full,” the meeting lasted for only 30 minutes, mainly because several sections took much less time than they were allotted.

For example, the agenda allotted 30 minutes for committee members to introduce themselves, but it took only 11 minutes for 14 members to do so (Fields, the 15th member, did not say anything about himself). A 16th member, life coach Tony Robbins, did not appear at all, and a question sent to the chat asking whether he was still a committee member went unanswered.

The public comments section, for which 30 minutes had been allotted, took 1 minute. Earlier in the meeting, Fields discussed ways the public could submit written comments, including both by email and live online during the meeting itself. “If [your comments] are not addressed during this meeting, we’ll get a chance to address them after this meeting,” he said. “Certainly, we’ll get back to you as quickly as we can.”

But when it came time to hear or discuss public comments, Fields said, “I want to thank members of the public for joining today. We appreciate and sincerely are looking forward to your engagement and to your interest. We’ve received a number of letters to this committee from groups as diverse as the National Association of Rural Health Clinics, the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians, the American Occupational Therapists [sic], the American Pharmacists Association, and the American Academy of Family Practice [sic]. All of your correspondence will be distributed to the appropriate workgroup, and we look forward to continuing feedback as the work progresses inside this committee.”

Committee members who had been assigned to chair one of the committee’s six workgroups each explained their group’s purpose. The groups include:

Reducing Administrative Burden: This workgroup seeks to “eliminate unnecessary and burdensome regulations (including duplicative, obsolete, contradictory rules and regs) and create an ongoing process to maintain regulatory hygiene” and also to “Evaluate friction and challenges across CMS programs, including traditional Medicare, Medicare Advantage, Medicare ACOs [accountable care organizations], and Medicaid & CHIP.”

MAHA [Make America Healthy Again] by Improving Wellness and Preventing Chronic Disease: “Champion the idea of the ‘healthspan’ for all Americans …. We will seek to: Promote the integration of prevention strategies directly into communities … Accelerate access to high-quality healthcare teams inclusive of behavioral health practitioners, and build longitudinal and trusted relationships between patients and providers.”

Deploying Real-Time Data: “[We will] build real-time data infrastructure to reduce administrative burden, improve quality, and reduce friction between payers and providers, and combat fraud, waste, and abuse,” the workgroup slide said. This will include efforts to “modernize and harmonize Medicaid data infrastructure across states.”

Improving Care for Vulnerable Populations: This workgroup will “determine which non-medical services belong in Medicaid, leverage Medicaid data to reduce costs, improve quality, and demonstrate ROI [return on investment]” and will also “move Medicaid from volume to value.”

Strengthening Medicare Advantage: This group seeks to “identify incentives to reward MA [Medicare Advantage] patients for actions that improve their health outcomes” and “decrease friction of participating as a provider in MA and improve real-time connectivity across care settings.”

Crushing Fraud, Waste, and Abuse: This workgroup seeks to “harness technology, tools, and partnerships to proactively and transparently prevent fraud and identify innovative approaches to reduce waste and abuse,” as well as “incentivize appropriate utilization and accelerate payment timelines.”

Last week, Public Citizen released a memo entitled “Trump’s New Corporate Interest Healthcare Advisory Panel,” which said that the committee members were rife with conflicts of interest. “Nearly all the appointees hold senior leadership positions in healthcare organizations that are invested in making money off the U.S. health system, suggesting they may be more committed to serving the bottom lines of groups that profit from the U.S.’s broken healthcare framework than providing advice that will best serve the needs of American patients,” the memo said, adding that the committee did not include any patient or consumer representatives.

“Many of the appointees to the [committee] are politically connected to the Trump world or Republican party or have business relationships with the Trump family or Trump administration officials, indicating little diversity in political philosophy among the panel members,” the memo noted. “It is not clear whether this group meets the requirements for membership balance under the Federal Advisory Committee Act.”

Some examples cited by the group of members with conflicts of interest include:

• Sebastian Caliri, a venture capitalist whose employer’s investments include Blink Health, a prescription drug platform whose board includes Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr.
• Elizabeth Fago, who worked in the nursing home business and has raised millions of dollars for President Trump. Last year, Trump pardoned her son Paul Walczak, who pled guilty to tax crimes.
• Andrew Lynch, PhD, an executive at psychiatric hospital company Arcadia Healthcare, which in 2024 settled with the Justice Department for nearly $20 million over allegations of billing for medically unnecessary care.

Committee members’ terms are for 2 years and the committee will meet quarterly, Fields said.

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