Thursday, July 17, 2025

MedPAC releases annual data book, new members announced.

 A few weeks ago, MEDPAC released its annual "Report to Congress" on various aspects of the Medicare program.

Now on July 17, 2025, they release the annual DATA BOOK.  Find it here:

https://www.medpac.gov/document-type/data-book/

Or see the 216 page PDF here:

As occurs in Social Security, the number of workers per Medicare beneficiary is declining (p 19):



Maybe an argument for birthright citizenship - more babies (the population of which is about 200K per year).  There are 67M Medicare beneficiaries.


NEW MEMBERS OF MEDPAC

See an announcement of new members for MEDPAC.

I'll quote the new member information in full.

The newly appointed members are Thomas Diller, M.D., MMM, Vice President of the Population Health Services Organization at AdventHealth and President of the AdventHealth Provider Network in Maitland, FL, and Gokhan Metan, M.Sc., Ph.D., NACD.DC., Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of WiseCareAI and founder and Chief Technology & Analytics Officer of Full Spectrum Insights in St. Louis, MO. Their terms will expire in April 2028. Betty Rambur, Ph.D., R.N., F.A.A.N., Professor of Nursing and Routhier Endowed Chair for Practice in the College of Nursing at the University of Rhode Island in Kingston, RI, was appointed as Vice Chair, and her current term will expire in April 2026. 

The reappointed members are Robert Cherry, M.D., M.S., Chief Medical and Quality Officer at UCLA Health in Los Angeles, CA; Kenny Kan, FSA, CPA, CFA, MAAA, Vice President and Chief Actuary of Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey in Newark, NJ; Gregory Poulsen, MBA, Senior Vice President at Intermountain Healthcare in Salt Lake City, UT; and Scott Sarran, M.D., founding Chief Medical Officer of Harmonic Health, which provides virtual care and care management for dementia patients across the country and is based in Saint Charles, MO. Their terms will expire in April 2028.

Congress established MedPAC in 1997 to analyze access to care, cost and quality of care, and other key issues affecting Medicare. The Comptroller General is responsible for naming new commission members.

Brief biographies of the new commission members and new Vice Chair are below:

Thomas Diller, MD, MMM, is Vice President of the Population Health Services Organization at AdventHealth, a health system with over 50 hospitals across nine states, and is also President of the AdventHealth Provider Network. His current roles at AdventHealth involve supporting value-based care initiatives for the health system's physician network. Previously, Dr. Diller was Vice President of Population Health and Quality Transformation for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana, which provided Medicare Advantage and commercial products. His responsibilities included engaging with the health plan's provider network to support value-based payment programs and coordinating clinical transformation efforts to improve health care quality. He also held leadership positions with health systems such as ChristusHealth in Texas and Greenville Health System in South Carolina. Dr. Diller received his MD from Southern Illinois University School of Medicine and his Master of Medical Management (MMM) from Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College. He is Board Certified in Internal Medicine.

Gokhan Metan, MSc, PhD, NACD.DC, currently serves as the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer at WiseCare AI Inc., an AI startup focused on matching Medicare and Affordable Care Act (ACA) beneficiaries with the most suitable healthcare coverage through a proprietary intelligence platform. In addition, Dr. Metan is the Founder and Chief Technology & Analytics Officer of Full Spectrum Insights, a consulting firm specializing in data infrastructure, cloud computing, machine learning, AI, and software delivery. Dr. Metan has served as an executive in organizations ranging in size from Fortune 100 companies to start-ups with the aim of creating reliable, high-impact technologies that improve healthcare access and outcomes. Prior to his current roles, Dr. Metan held executive positions at Centene Corporation, a publicly traded managed care company; SSM Health, a not-for-profit U.S. healthcare system; and Humana, the second largest Medicare Advantage insurer in the country. He is Directorship Certified by the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD.DC) and serves as Chairman of the Board at WiseCare AI Inc. Dr. Metan holds dual Master of Science degrees in Management & Industrial Engineering and earned his Doctor of Philosophy in Operations Research with a minor in Finance from Lehigh University.

Betty Rambur, PhD, RN, FAAN, is Professor of Nursing and Routhier Endowed Chair for Practice in the College of Nursing at University of Rhode Island. She was the Founding Dean of the College of Nursing and Health Science at University of Vermont and served as Chair of Nursing at University of Mary in Bismarck, ND.  Dr. Rambur previously led North Dakota’s private/public health reform partnership that led to omnibus reform legislation and also served as the only nurse on Vermont’s Green Mountain Care Board, a five-member independent board that regulates health care in Vermont and provides oversight of the transition from fee-for-service to value-based care.

For more information about MedPAC, contact executive director Paul Masi at (202) 220-3700. Other inquiries should be directed to Sarah Kaczmarek, Managing Director of GAO Public Affairs at media@gao.gov.