Greetings from Paul Masi

Greetings,

My name is Paul Masi, and I am excited to return to MedPAC as the next Executive Director. Leading the staff at MedPAC is a great honor, and I want to thank Mike Chernew and Amol Navathe, MedPAC’s Chair and Vice Chair, for this opportunity. I also want to thank Jim Mathews for his long service to MedPAC, including his leadership in the Executive Director role since 2017. Leading the Commission through these last several years has required Jim to navigate unprecedented challenges. During that time, the Commission continued to be an outstanding source of analysis and advice, and it thrived in fulfilling its mission.

While serving as the Assistant Director here from 2017 through 2019, I developed a deep appreciation for the institution of MedPAC, the importance of its mission, and its unique role providing analysis and advice to the Congress to support its efforts to improve Medicare for beneficiaries, taxpayers, and providers. For the last four years I managed the Medicare Cost Estimates Unit at the Congressional Budget Office, where I also had the opportunity to support the Congress with analysis and information about Medicare in a nonpartisan environment.

I have long admired MedPAC’s work. Its analysis and advice are authoritative, timely, and respected—thanks to the collaborative process between MedPAC’s talented and dedicated staff and its diverse set of Commissioners, who bring their expertise and passion from all different areas of the health care environment. MedPAC is the first place I check when I want to get up to speed on an issue affecting Medicare. Here are a few recent pieces of work I have turned to in the past few months:

1. Favorable selection and future directions for Medicare Advantage payment policy
2. Moving beyond the Merit-based Incentive Payment System
3. Realigning incentives in Medicare Part D
4. Analyses of disparities in outcomes for Medicare beneficiaries with different social risks
5. Evaluation of a prototype design for a post-acute care prospective payment system
6. Reforming Medicare’s wage index systems

MedPAC is focused on its mission of serving Congress with analysis and ideas, while being guided by its three core principles:

1. beneficiaries should have access to high-quality health care in an appropriate clinical setting;
2. taxpayers and beneficiaries finance Medicare, and payments should be set to obtain good value for the program; and
3. providers should have incentives to supply efficient, appropriate care, and payments should be made equitably.

I am looking forward to the September public meeting and the work ahead.