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Health-Reform Principles That Can Cross Party Lines
[June 26, 2017]

Health-Reform Principles That Can Cross Party Lines


The Health Reform Roundtable, a diverse group of health care policy experts from across the political spectrum, is proposing opportunities for bipartisan agreement on subsidies for health care coverage and on Medicaid. In their op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, the Roundtable proposes the following recommendations:

  • Subsidies should be available to help those who need help to purchase adequate insurance. Greater subsidies should be offered to those who can least afford the cost of insurance premiums.
  • The existing tax exclusion for employer-sponsored health insurance should have reasonable limits.
  • States should be given greater flexibility to coordinate and streamline coverage options in Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program, and other publicly supported insurance so families can obtain the coverage that best suits their circumstances and serves their needs.
  • Use of Medicaid waivers should be subject to real safeguards. Funds for health-care services must not be diverted from the current purposes of promoting health and providing health care services to spending for other purposes. Funding for low-income populations must not be diverted to cover higher-income individuals.

The Roundtable believes these propsitions deserve support transcending partisanship and ideology. They are intended to ensure adequate help is provided to those in greatest need.



"Roundtable members with vastly differing views have done a remarkable job finding common ground on crucial issues now before Congress. We hope they will continue to generate ideas that lead to wise and durable improvements in the American health care system." ~ Robert J. Fersh, President and Founder, Convergence (News - Alert) Center for Policy Resolution.

The Health Reform Roundtable is convened by Convergence Center for Policy Resolution, Convergence is a Washington, DC-based non-profit organization that convenes people and groups with divergent views to build trust, identify solutions, and form alliances for action on critical national issues.


Roundtable organizers Ron Pollack and Gail Wilensky asked Convergence to convene some of the leading health care analysts and thinkers on the right and left in a "strange bedfellows" effort to develop widely supportable, consensus ideas for Congress and the administration to consider as they deliberate on health care reform. The Health Reform Roundtable began meeting in March 2017.

Op-Ed Authors*

Joseph Antos, is a Resident Scholar and the Wilson H. Taylor Scholar in Health Care and Retirement Policy at American Enterprise Institute 
Stuart Butler is a Senior Fellow at Brookings Institution 
Lanhee Chen is the David and Diane Steffy Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, and director of domestic policy studies in the Public Policy Program at Stanford University 
John McDonough is Professor of Practice at Harvard University T.H. Chan School of Public Health 
Ron Pollack is the Former Founding Executive Director and Chair Emeritus of Families USA 
Sara Rosenbaum is the Harold and Jane Hirsh Professor of Health Law and Policy, Milken Institute School of Public Health, George Washington University
Grace-Marie Turner is President of Galen Institute
Gail Wilensky is a Senior Fellow at Project HOPE

*Roundtable members have joined in their individual capacities with institutional affiliations provided for identification purposes only.

For more information about Convergence Center for Policy Resolution, please visit www.convergencepolicy.org.


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