Many investors and founders shy away from building Medicaid-focused companies. Andy Slavitt – policymaker, investor and ‘In the Bubble’ host – joins us to discuss why this is a huge mistake. Medicaid now covers 85 million Americans and is where the opportunities to build meaningful and high impact companies are the greatest. We talk about Andy’s work at Town Hall Ventures and his takeaways from leading CMS in the Obama administration and COVID strategy in the early days of the Biden administration.

We dive into: 

• Why Medicaid-focused founders should think of states as 50 potential customers, not as governments
• A few of his portfolio companies: Eleanor Health, Cityblock Health, Plume and Spark Pediatrics
• How states can get better results from Medicaid managed care
• The wide range of impacts from Medicaid expansion: lower medical debt and bankruptcy, increase in home ownership, and improvements in maternal, child health, cancer and cardiac outcomes

Andy talks about the deep impact on people’s lives from having Medicaid coverage:

“In every single study, all of those outcomes – every single one of them that are quality of life and health related – are better under Medicaid expansion. And it makes sense. If you put a little bit more money in people's pockets, put a little more security underneath them, they're going to live their lives, they are going to take that risk and take a better job, they are going to not worry as much … the kids are going to be healthier and more stable.”

Relevant Links

Town Hall Ventures website

Health Affairs post showing far higher investments in Medicare- than Medicaid-focused companies 

Medicaid facts and figures

ASPE study estimating that 15 million people will lose Medicaid coverage with the end of continuous enrollment  

RWJF study showing that almost two thirds of Medicaid enrollees don’t know about upcoming redeterminations

About Our Guest

Andy Slavitt has led many of the nation’s most important health care initiatives, serving as President Biden’s White House Senior Advisor for the COVID response, President Obama’s head of Medicare and Medicaid and overseeing the turnaround, implementation and defense of the Affordable Care Act. Slavitt is the “outsider’s insider,” serving in leading private and non-profit roles in addition to his government services. He is founder and Board Chair Emeritus of United States of Care, a national non-profit health advocacy organization as well as a founding partner of Town Hall Ventures, a healthcare firm that invests in underrepresented communities. He co-chaired a national initiative on the future of health care at the Bipartisan Policy Center. He chronicles what goes on inside the government and across the nation at town halls, in USA Today, on his award-winning podcast In the Bubble, and on twitter. He is the author of Preventable, a best-selling account of the U.S.’s coronavirus response, released in 2021. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard Business School, he and his wife have two grown sons.

Listen to Andy’s podcast ‘In the Bubble’

https://lemonadamedia.com/show/inthebubble/

Read Andy’s book ‘Preventable’

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250770165/preventable

Connect With Us

For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on Twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn.