The Policy Stack

Why does almost 80% of America’s healthcare spend go to treating chronic disease while prevention barely receives a fraction of the $5 trillion health budget? On this episode of The Policy Stack, Lisa Bari tries to get to the root of the problem with Dr. Anand Parekh , Chief Health Policy Officer at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and author of Prevention First: Policymaking for...

Brian Janssen reflects on running Medicare operations at WPS Health Solutions, processing 130+ million claims annually through an infrastructure that many healthcare professionals don't know exists. He shares why MACs are "the largest backbone of processing in the country that the healthcare world doesn't really know about," how regional variation matters when Flint, Michigan's environmental crisi...

Liza Health’s Duncan Reece reflects on decades in value-based care, from Medicare Health Support's failure to today's explosion of CMMI models launching simultaneously. He shares why MSSP's $10 billion in savings gets unfairly criticized against Medicare's $1.2 trillion spend, how Iora built its own EHR from scratch when nothing else worked for accountable care, and why the real unlock isn't payme...

Kristen Valdes from b.well reflects on building CMS's voluntary Health Technology Ecosystem framework after discovering that, despite a decade of interoperability policy, live demos showed only 1 out of 30+ providers could return data automatically. She shares lessons on community organizing when 500+ companies need coordination, but the government can't lead, why the real barriers are business an...

Most healthcare decisions happen far from the headlines. The Policy Stack, hosted by Lisa Bari, reveals the people and processes shaping how American healthcare really works. From state leaders to industry innovators, each episode examines the laws, funding, and political realities behind the policies that shape care.

In this live episode from Innovaccer’s Mini-Xccelerate conference in DC, Blair Childs and Dave Johnson examine the sweeping policy and market shifts transforming U.S. healthcare. They discuss the move from government-designed systems toward market accountability, how “liberating data” is key to real value-based care, and why structural incentives, not funding, determine the pace of reform. With th...

Lisa Bari speaks with Timi Leslie about implementing California's groundbreaking data exchange framework, where healthcare organizations must share data across sectors for the first time. Timi shares lessons from her career in health IT policy, about why technical interoperability is just the beginning, and how to build trust between organizations that don’t usually work together: from hospitals t...

Dan O'Neill reflects on 15 years in health technology, services , and policy after discovering that most healthcare administrative problems could have been solved decades ago. He shares lessons on why business model problems masquerade as technology challenges, how organizational inertia perpetuates inefficiency, and why "slapping AI on it" won't fix structural issues rooted in misaligned incentiv...

Nikita Singareddy reflects on building technology for America's most complex healthcare system after discovering that 20% of Medicaid enrollees lose coverage due to bureaucratic failures. She shares lessons on why every government case is an "edge case," solving policy problems before building tech solutions, and maintaining an enrollee-first approach across 56 different state systems.

Kody Kinsley speaks with Lisa Bari to reflect on leading North Carolina’s $26 billion health agency through COVID-19, Medicaid expansion, and a behavioral health crisis. He shares lessons on making impossible choices, driving reform under pressure, and turning crises into opportunities.