Washington · Healthcare Advisory Committee
Pattern analysis
Who the committee serves
Record as of November 6, 2026
01 · Sector representation
All 18 members mapped
Hospital systems and finance
3Value-based care and managed care
3Primary care consolidation
1Insurance-adjacent and claims
2For-profit behavioral health
1Government (CMS)
2Venture capital and health tech
1Wellness and celebrity
1State government
2Safety net and FQHCs
1Nursing homes and post-acute care
102 · Focus areas
Who benefits from each stated focus area
Chronic disease prevention
Robbins (Fountain Life longevity diagnostics), Carmouche (Lumeris AI primary care), Fields (VillageMD risk-based primary care), Gudapati (population health education).
Outcomes accountability
Bessler (Honest Health value-based contracts), Liljenquist (Castell ACO, $86.7M in Medicare savings), Carmouche (Lumeris enablement), R. Thomas (Availity claims processing).
Real-time data
R. Thomas (Availity: 13 billion transactions a year), Caliri (8VC health tech portfolio), Brandt and Carlton (CMS modernization agenda).
Vulnerable populations
Rhee (NACHC health centers), Thomas-Hemak (Wright Center), Lynch (Acadia behavioral health), Huhn (Missouri mental health), McElroy (Ohio aging).
Medicare Advantage sustainability
Gassen (Sanford Health and the Oscar Health board), Liljenquist (SelectHealth, a Medicare Advantage insurer), Bessler (Honest Health risk adjustment), Laraway (Cleveland Clinic Medicare Advantage revenue), Fields (VillageMD Medicare Advantage contracts).
03 · Structural gaps
Who is not at the table
- ×Independent physician practice owners
- ×Physician-owned hospital operators
- ×Rural hospital administrators outside a system
- ×Patient advocacy organizations unaffiliated with industry
- ×Healthcare antitrust experts
- ×Medical school debt and physician workforce experts
- ×Uninsured or underinsured patient representatives
- ×Direct primary care physicians
- ×Independent emergency medicine groups
- ×Physicians who have testified against hospital consolidation
- ×Academic researchers on hospital market concentration
- ×State attorney general staff investigating health system pricing
04 · Physician-owned hospitals
Members with a direct stake in the ban
AHA chair for 2027. AHA is the leading institutional opponent of physician-owned hospital expansion and opposes the bills that would loosen the ban.
CFO of Cleveland Clinic, a direct financial beneficiary of the Section 6001 ban and of Medicare's site-of-service payment gap.
Intermountain Health is the kind of large nonprofit system whose market position the ban protects.
Honest Health's value-based model is built on hospital system partnerships, not physician ownership.
Every career role has served payer-aligned consolidation, the opposite of physician ownership.
VillageMD is the corporate aggregation of independent practices, which displaces physician-owned independent medicine.
Former Aetna chief medical officer, current Providence Health Plan board member. Payer-integrated medicine, not physician ownership.
Led Stark Law reform at CMS. Controls the regulatory architecture that governs physician ownership.
8VC's portfolio serves platform companies that capture CMS payment categories, not physician owners.
05 · The dominant gravity
Structural conclusion
The center of gravity is Medicare Advantage and value-based care. At least 10 of 18 members have a direct financial interest in Medicare Advantage rates, value-based contracts, or the claims infrastructure that processes them.
The hospital bloc (Gassen, Laraway, Liljenquist) runs systems with more than $45 billion in combined revenue. The 2027 AHA chairman sits beside the CFO of Cleveland Clinic and the chief strategist of Intermountain. All three systems benefit from the Section 6001 ban on physician-owned hospitals.
The value-based care corridor (Bessler, Carmouche, Fields) runs companies whose revenue depends on Medicare Advantage risk adjustment and CMS payment innovation. Bessler's company was founded by Rubicon Founders investors, among them the current and a former head of the CMS Innovation Center.
No member represents independent physician practice. No member represents physician-owned hospitals. No member has publicly backed Section 6001 reform. The charter names “Medicare Advantage sustainability” as a priority, and the roster is built to sustain it.