What are the red flags for Brian Peters?

AHA Dossiers Power Map About

Brian Peters

Trustee, term 2025-2027

President & CEO | Michigan Health & Hospital Association

Last verified November 4, 2026

6 Red Flags

Affiliations

•President and CEO of the Michigan Health & Hospital Association in Okemos, Mich., which represents Michigan's community hospitals. He has spent his whole career at MHA, rising through advocacy roles to CEO.
•Also leads the MHA Health Foundation, a 501(c)(3), and the MHA Service Corporation, a fee-based services arm.
•AHA Board of Trustees: elected August 2024 to a three-year term that began Jan. 1, 2025; he is listed on the current AHA roster.
•Member of the AHAPAC Board of Directors, which steers the AHA's federal PAC.
•Past chair of the AHA State Issues Forum and former member of AHA Regional Policy Board 5 and the AHA Committee on Nominations.
•Director of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, the state's dominant insurer; BCBSM members re-elected him to its board on May 21, 2026, in the board's provider category.

Financial / Compensation

•MHA's FY2025 Form 990 (year ending June 2025, EIN 38-1458751) reports Peters' compensation at $1,349,100 plus $159,670 in other compensation, about $1.51 million in total, up from about $1.32 million ($1,233,526 plus $89,489) in FY2024, a 14% raise.
•MHA reported $61.95 million in revenue, $56.1 million in expenses and $5.8 million in net income in FY2025, and its net assets grew to $28.5 million from $22.7 million.
•Almost half of MHA's FY2025 revenue ($30.4 million, 49.1%) was booked as contributions, mostly dues and grants from the hospitals it represents.
•MHA's 990 discloses that it provided first-class or charter travel.
•Two other MHA executives, both with the title Executive Vice President and Chief of Staff, were paid about $829,000 (Nancy McKeague) and $802,000 (Laura Appel) including other compensation in FY2025.
•Corewell Health CEO Tina Freese Decker sat on MHA's own board (FY2024 990), linking the state association's governance to the system that held the AHA chair in 2025.
•Any director fees Peters receives from BCBSM are a separate income stream disclosed in BCBSM's own filings, not MHA's 990.

Lobbying and Political

•MHA spent $200,000 in 2025 and $150,000 in the first three quarters of 2026 on outside federal lobbyist Cornerstone Government Affairs ($50,000 a quarter), plus in-house federal lobbying by MHA staff (Senate LDA filings).
•Its 2025 federal filings focus on Medicaid state directed payments, provider taxes and H.R. 1 (the One Big Beautiful Bill Act), plus Medicare site-neutral payment, telehealth waivers and the 340B program.
•In 2026 MHA's lobbyists began monitoring H.R. 9504, the Tax-exempt Hospital Transparency Act, along with the Prices on the Wall Act (H.R. 9390) and the Lower Costs, More Transparency Act of 2026 (H.R. 9393), bills that target hospital pricing and tax-exempt status.
•MHA's Health PAC reports $386,215 in total contributions and $455,741 in total expenditures on TransparencyUSA (period not specified). Its largest recipient is the AHA's federal PAC, AHAPAC, at $90,389, followed by the Michigan Senate and House Democratic caucus funds ($48,875 and $46,000).
•As an AHAPAC board member, Peters helps direct the national hospital industry's federal campaign giving, which his own state PAC also funds.
•MHA vigorously defends Michigan's certificate-of-need law, which blocks competitors from entering hospital markets.

Revolving Door

•Gov. Gretchen Whitmer appointed him to the Michigan Economic Recovery Council during COVID-19 and to the 2020 Census Complete Count Committee.
•He sits on the board of BCBSM, the insurer that pays the hospitals he represents.

Home System Record

•Michigan now has three people on the AHA's published board roster: Peters, Trinity Health CEO Mike Slubowski (Livonia, term through 2028) and Corewell Health CEO Tina Freese Decker, whose past-chair term ends Dec. 31, 2026.
•Corewell Health, MHA's largest member system, held the AHA chair in 2025 while Peters sat on the board.
•In 2025 and 2026 Peters led MHA's campaign against federal Medicaid cuts in H.R. 1, warning publicly that the reductions would close Michigan hospitals.
•MHA's 2026 federal agenda shifted toward 'affordability' and 340B defense, while its lobbyists tracked bills that would force hospital price posting and scrutinize tax exemption.

Litigation and Scrutiny

•No 2025 or 2026 lawsuits or enforcement actions naming MHA or Peters surfaced in news and legal-database searches.
•Michigan's hospital sector has a history of antitrust enforcement: the Justice Department and Michigan's attorney general sued four hospital systems, including Henry Ford Allegiance Health, over agreements not to compete for patients in marketing.

Red Flags

He sits on both sides of the rate table: CEO of the Michigan hospital lobby and, re-elected in May 2026, a director of BCBSM, the state's dominant insurer.

His pay rose 14% to about $1.51 million in FY2025 at a trade association funded largely by dues from tax-exempt hospitals, and MHA's 990 discloses first-class or charter travel.

MHA's PAC routes its single largest contribution to AHAPAC, the national PAC whose board Peters sits on, so state hospital money flows into a federal fund he helps steer.

MHA is lobbying Congress against Medicaid cuts while also monitoring hospital price-transparency and tax-exemption bills, defending the revenue streams of systems that report healthy margins.

He defends certificate-of-need protection for incumbent hospitals in Lansing and brings that protectionism to the AHA board.

Michigan's outsized presence on the AHA board, with Corewell, Trinity and MHA all at the table and Corewell's CEO on MHA's own board, ties national hospital policy closely to Michigan's largest systems.

Pattern Summary

Peters is a career hospital lobbyist who has never worked outside the Michigan Health & Hospital Association and now helps govern the national lobby. He was paid about $1.51 million in FY2025, sits on the board of the state's dominant insurer while representing the hospitals that bill it, and runs a state PAC whose largest check goes to the AHA's own federal PAC. Together with Corewell and Trinity, he gives Michigan's hospital incumbents an unusually large voice at the AHA.

Brian Peters

Red Flags

Sources and Citations