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Healthcare
April 12, 2019

2019 Hewitt Health Care Lecture: U.S. HHS Secretary Alex Azar's Remarks on Healthcare Price Transparency, Opioid Crisis, HIV Epidemic & More

This past Monday, Pioneer held the 13th annual Hewitt Healthcare Lecture to honor our longtime chairman (and chairman of Beth Israel Deaconess) Colby Hewitt, Jr. The crowd of 250 enjoyed a substantive and fun night — the two can go together! — at Harvard...
Healthcare
October 30, 2014

Possible Civil and Criminal Offenses During ACA Implementation?

The transition to a new healthcare exchange in Massachusetts has gone poorly. In a forthcoming report, Pioneer Institute will examine what exactly went wrong during implementation, with the help of two whistle-blowers and internal audits on the project.   Yet during the...
Healthcare
October 14, 2014

State Internal Docs Contradict Gov. Patrick: Show $1B Price Tag for ACA Transition

Governor Patrick has now called our Health Connector cost estimate report “politically motivated,” “spurious” and “inaccurate.” He’s gone back and accused Pioneer of “making stuff up out of thin air.” He can employ whatever words he likes, but he cannot deny the cruel...
Healthcare
October 9, 2014

An Open Letter to Governor Deval Patrick about Healthcare Cost Overruns

This letter was sent via email to the Patrick Administration earlier today.  October 9, 2014 Governor Deval Patrick Massachusetts State House Office of the Governor Room 105 Boston, MA 02133 Dear Governor Patrick: On Monday the State House News Service reported your statements...
American Citizenship, Healthcare
September 25, 2014

The Ugly Truth About State Healthcare Costs

Last week, Pioneer Institute released a report showing that the cost of transitioning to an Affordable Care Act-compliant health insurance exchange is likely to top $1 billion over two years. The figure includes $540 million in 2014 for a new transitional Medicaid program...
Healthcare
September 17, 2014

The Health Connector Authority Protesting Too Much

In FY2011, the year prior to passage of the Affordable Care Act, the administrative budget of the Massachusetts Health Connector Authority was $29 million.  By FY2013, while the Connector Authority struggled to implement its change to ACA, its budget had risen to...
Healthcare
September 17, 2014

Deval's Big Dig: Responding to the Governor on Connector Report

When we talk about the Big Dig, we talk in big, round numbers. Why?  Because it cost gobs of money. You can debate whether it was worth it, and for years we did. Journalists dug into the story. Careers were dashed and...
Healthcare
May 6, 2014

Massachusetts to Default to Healthcare.gov, After Hail Mary to Save Its Exchange

Yesterday Massachusetts officials announced plans to default to Healthcare.gov, but also announced a quixotic sprint to try first try to rebuild the entire site in five months with a brand new, no-bid taxpayer-paid contract to health care software developer hCentive. This move...
Healthcare
April 15, 2014

100+ Unanswered Questions about the Failed Connector ACA Website

As a result of the failed Connector website, 160,000 Massachusetts residents are on temporary public Medicaid coverage even though they don’t qualify for MassHealth. Failure at the Connector will cost Massachusetts taxpayers over $100 million dollars this year. So, Pioneer has questions...
Healthcare
March 30, 2014

Mass Connector Called Before Congress To Explain Failed Rollout

Chris Cassidy at the Boston Herald is reporting that Jean Yang, the executive director of the Massachusetts Health Connector, will be called before two Congressional committees to explain the failings of the exchange under the ACA on Thursday April 3rd at 10am....