Q&A: Where Anthony Wright wants to lead Families USA

Anthony Wright, the new executive director of Families USA, is hitting the ground running.

Last week, Wright started his new role in Washington after 22 years as executive director of Health Access California. I caught up with him to discuss his vision for one of the nation’s leading health-care advocacy organizations. Our conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Health brief: Are there lessons you learned at Health Access California that you think will be helpful in Washington?

Wright: One lesson is to make sure that there’s a strong consumer voice in the crafting of health-care policy. Patients and the public are sometimes left out of these discussions, but they are the point of the health-care system and should be at the center of the conversation.

Health brief: What health policy issues do you intend to prioritize early in your tenure?

Wright: Right now, we have a government guarantee that nobody has to spend more than 8.5 percent of their income on health coverage, but that’s set to expire in the next year.

If those tax credits are allowed to expire, that would mean a spike in premiums of hundreds of dollars per month on average and potentially around 5 million Americans losing coverage. That’s a crucial policy that we need to get lawmakers on the record about as we go into this fall.

Health brief: How are you preparing for 2025 and the election aftermath?

Wright: We need to be very clear that our health care is on the ballot. There are stark differences on health care that we need to hear from our policymakers on, whether it’s reproductive health, the ACA and its future, the [expanded tax credits] or prescription drug prices.

On prescription drug prices, we could see [the federal government] either expanding both the number of drugs that we negotiate over and having those discounted prices be extended to a much broader set of payers and patients. Or we could see that power be repealed.

In terms of the ACA, it’s not just the 5 million people who could lose coverage under the expiration of those subsidies. It’s the 20 million-plus folks that might lose coverage under a total repeal … [which would bring on] spiking premiums leading the market into a death spiral.

Health brief: Is there anything you achieved in California that you’d like to see replicated on a national scale?

Wright: In California, we worked a lot on the issues of cost and value, and Families USA has also been a leader in that. We created an Office of Health Care Affordability that set a goal for health growth, which a number of states are following.

Given my background growing up in the Bronx in the poorest congressional district in the country, being a son of an immigrant from Ecuador and the grandson of immigrants from Ireland and China, and actually even being uninsured for parts of my childhood, issues of access, economic security and equity are a personal passion for me. That’s something I was happy to work on in California and want to continue doing so with this national cap.

Sanders, Cassidy seek subpoena vote for Steward Health CEO

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee is launching an investigation into the bankruptcy of Steward Health Care, a Dallas-based company with private equity ties that owns 31 hospitals across eight states.

Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and ranking member Bill Cassidy (R-La.) announced that the panel will vote on July 25 to subpoena Steward’s CEO, Ralph de la Torre, to testify at a Sept. 12 hearing on the health system’s financial decisions leading up to its May bankruptcy filing.

Key context: Steward is selling all of its U.S. hospitals to help offload its $9 billion debt, which includes $1.2 billion in loans, $6.6 billion in unpaid rent, nearly $1 billion in unpaid bills from medical vendors and suppliers, and $290 million in unpaid employee wages and benefits.

Steward has blamed rising interest rates, labor costs and insufficient government health insurance reimbursement rates for its bankruptcy. Newly released court documents also show that in the months leading up to the filing, top executives awarded themselves multimillion dollar payouts.

Zooming out: Steward’s bankruptcy is being probed in several states, including Massachusetts and Arizona. The health system is also under scrutiny by the Justice Department, which recently launched a criminal investigation into the company over allegations of fraud and corruption, according to Michael Kaplan of CBS News.

Steward didn’t respond to a request for comment.

FDA allows sales of more tobacco-flavored vapes

The Food and Drug Administration is allowing R.J. Reynolds to keep several e-cigarette products on the market, my colleague Rachel Roubein reports.

Federal health officials authorized sales of seven of the company’s Vuse Alto vaping products, but only for tobacco-flavored pods.

The agency stressed the move “does not mean these tobacco products are safe.” In a statement, the FDA said the company showed the products have the potential to provide a benefit to adults who smoke cigarettes, adding that kids are less likely to use tobacco-flavored e-cigarettes compared to other flavors.

The background: Last year, the FDA denied R.J. Reynolds’s application for several menthol-flavored products, a decision the company has challenged in court. But last month, the agency authorized the first menthol-flavored e-cigarette products, manufactured by NJOY, which drew swift criticism from some public health advocates.

A government watchdog found compliance issues with federal Medicaid eligibility redetermination requirements in nearly all states, including with long-standing requirements.

Key context: A pandemic-era policy prevented Americans from being dropped from Medicaid until it expired in April 2023. This prompted states to review their ballooning rolls and remove those no longer eligible for the safety net program.

The Government Accountability Office identified several compliance issues during the so-called “unwinding.” For instance, about 420,000 eligible individuals, including children, lost coverage because states assessed household, not individual, eligibility, according to the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services.

• The watchdog recommended that CMS document and implement oversight practices to prevent and detect state compliance issues with redeterminations. The agency agreed with the GAO’s recommendation.

On the move: Joel McElvain is now acting deputy general counsel at HHS, overseeing matters related to CMS. McElvain, a longtime Justice Department official, had previously been serving as HHS special counsel, working on drug-price negotiation.

“I shouldn’t have to go into medical debt just to be able to live.”

— Virginia Beach resident Robyn DeChabert on a pharmacy charging her $1,700 for a Paxlovid prescription.

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