Lauren Peters takes on new private-sector role to curb health care costs – The Boston Globe

“It really stems out of the growing need to address affordability in Massachusetts,” Peters said. “MP3 is a unique way of bringing together the local payers and providers in this market to address affordability and access challenges.”

Peters first got involved in health care policy as an aide in the House of Representatives. She later went to work for the Health Policy Commission, and then for Charlie Baker’s administration, as health and human services undersecretary. She was appointed to lead CHIA, a state agency that collects and crunches industry data, in late 2022, and left CHIA earlier this year.

MP3 members include Boston Medical Center and its WellSense plan, Mass General Brigham and MGB’s eponymous health plan, UMass Memorial Health and its Medicare Advantage plan, along with Baystate Health, Health New England, and Fallon Health (slated to be acquired by MGB).

Missing for now are the state’s two biggest health insurers, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts and Point32Health. (Lora Pellegrini, who heads up the Massachusetts Association of Health Plans, representing Point32Health among other insurers, says she looks forward to working with Peters if she should reach out.)

Peters sees opportunities in payment reform by rewarding providers for high performance, improving data sharing, and streamlining administrative processes. The MP3’s work, Peters said, can also complement the efforts of a task force Governor Maura Healey set up in January to address health care costs.

“It’s fair to say that the status quo is not working,” Peters said. “The idea is let’s break through the traditional silos and divisions that in my view have often stood in the way of real progress. … This gives us the opportunity to start rolling up our sleeves and implementing some of these solutions now.”

John Barros is getting the band back together — under the giant roof of the Menino Convention & Exhibition Center.

Barros served as a top aide in Marty Walsh’s administration, as Walsh’s economic chief. After several years working in real estate, Barros was tapped by the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority board in January to be its interim executive director.

Now, Barros is bringing in some old friends from City Hall to help.

On Thursday, the MCCA announced three top-level appointments, all of whom once worked at City Hall for Walsh. General counsel Ashley Carvalho joins in May from the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, taking over for Kevin Scanlon, who recently left to join the Massachusetts Gaming Commission. Meanwhile, Joyce Linehan joins as the MCCA’s chief of staff, and Celina Barrios-Millner will be its chief of economic opportunity.

It’s a City Hall reunion over at 415 Summer St. in South Boston. That’s particularly true once two former Walsh advisers who joined before Barros arrived are factored in: John Towle, director of government affairs, and Broad Institute chief financial officer Emme Handy, the MCCA board chair.

Linehan might be the most well-known around Boston of the new arrivals. As Walsh’s former policy chief, she has spent much of her post-City Hall time working on special projects with the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

Among Linehan’s last big initiatives with Barros at City Hall: the “All Inclusive Boston” campaign. Using federal pandemic assistance funds, city officials worked with Colette Phillips’s PR firm, the Proverb ad agency led by Daren Bascome, and the tourism bureau now known as Meet Boston, to paint a diverse picture of the city.

Linehan hopes to continue similar work with Barros, to help the city bounce back after the pandemic and improve the way it’s viewed by outsiders. As a Dorchester native, she knows that diverse aspects of her home city often get overlooked.

She arrives at a tumultuous time: Barros’s predecessor, Marcel Vernon, left in December amid a dispute with the MCCA board, and the convention center authority remains under pressure to show it’s improving the diversity of its management ranks and suppliers.

Linehan knows the Boston celebrations around the US bicentennial in 1976 helped put the city on the map as a tourism destination, and is hopeful the MCCA can play a key role in rekindling some of that magic as celebrations for the 250th roll out this year.

What a memorable way to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.

Entrepreneur Matt George had asked Nasdaq management to pick March 17 as the day for the autonomous aviation startup he leads, Merlin, to fly into the public markets. As a result, Merlin employees trekked to Manhattan to ring the exchange’s opening bell that morning, as a crowd of St. Patrick’s revelers gathered for the annual parade outside.

“Because of our Boston roots, we tried to make sure we were listing on St. Patrick’s Day,” George said afterwards. “Nasdaq gets to decide when we list, and we lobbied them hard for St. Patrick’s Day.”

And with that, Merlin became the first tech company of the year from the Boston area to go public. Several biotechs have held initial public offerings during this slow time, and a local telehealth startup called Uberdoc went public on a Canadian exchange on Wednesday.

Merlin didn’t go public via the traditional IPO route, nor did Uberdoc. They both merged into publicly traded shell firms, known as special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs. In Merlin’s case, it teamed up with a SPAC created by New York investment firm Inflection Point, and Inflection Point chief executive Mike Blitzer joined Merlin’s board.

“It’s exciting for the team,” George said. “I think it should be hopefully exciting for Boston.”

The Charles River Regional Chamber has gradually grown its ranks over the years, rising to the top five biggest chambers of commerce in the state from 20th just over a decade ago.

It could be poised to rise in the ranks yet again, now that the Brookline Chamber of Commerce’s board members have decided to dissolve their organization, with the bigger chamber next door adopting its members and at least two of its traditions.

Charles River president Greg Reibman had reached out to Chris Mutty, the Brookline chamber’s executive director, with an open invitation to join, if the time became right, several times over the years. Apparently, in December, that time had arrived.

“It was always something I thought would be good for the businesses in Brookline,” Reibman said. “This is not a takeover. … It’s a deliberate choice to help their members land somewhere strong.”

Mutty blamed rising costs and the increasing demands of effective advocacy and programming as reasons for the move, and noted that Reibman’s chamber is financially stable with a strong regional presence. Mutty will join Reibman’s team for the transition, based in Needham, bringing it up to eight people.

The Brookline chamber has about 150 members, the vast majority of them small businesses. Their memberships will roll over into Charles River memberships, expiring at the time their previous memberships would have ended. Reibman agreed to keep running Brookline’s annual First Light holiday shopping promotion along Harvard Street, and to continue its annual Chobee Hoy award, in honor of the real estate broker and civic leader who died in 2024.

The Charles River chamber, which adopted its current name in 2021, got its start in Newton and has grown to encompass Needham, Wellesley, and Watertown. Brookline happens to be the first community that’s not along its namesake river. But Reibman has an explanation for that.

“The Muddy River [in Brookline] is a tributary to the Charles River,” Reibman said, “so we’ve got that one covered.”

Jon Chesto can be reached at jon.chesto@globe.com. Follow him @jonchesto.