How not to fix Medicare.

Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to leave Medicare alone. But in choosing Rep. Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina to head the Office of Management and Budget, he is signaling a huge fight lies ahead over the future of the program.

The false promise of state-based reform.

News leaks from last month's Republican Congressional retreat revealed there's a growing concern that precipitous change to the individual health insurance markets created by Obamacare will trigger their collapse.

'Pricing now appears to more accurately match medical costs'.

For the past two years, Marilyn Tavenner, who had bipartisan support when selected by President Barack Obama to run the CMS, has served as CEO of America's Health Insurance Plans, the leading trade association for health insurers. She's now seeking to marshal bipartisan support to save an individual insurance market dubbed a "disaster" by President Donald Trump and many Republicans on Capitol Hill. Last week, just prior to her testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Tavenner spoke about the fate of the market and other issues with Modern Healthcare editor Merrill Goozner. The following is an edited transcript.

The AHCA's hidden costs will hurt everyone.

It's time to start calling the American Health Care Act by its true name-the Force Older and Poorer Americans to Postpone Health Care Act.

Trump and Ryan are playing the long game.

Last week, the nation's hospital and physician groups joined patient, consumer and senior advocates in condemning the newly introduced American Health Care Act, which guts Medicaid and provides inadequate subsidies for buying individual health insurance plans.

'The software should be a joy to use'.

Since its founding in 1979, Epic Systems Corp. of Verona, Wis., has grown to become the nation's No. 1 healthcare software firm, with $2.5 billion in annual sales and 9,700 employees. Founder Judith Faulkner, one of Modern Healthcare's Top 25 Women In Healthcare, still plays a major role in setting strategy at the firm. At last month's Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society's annual conference in Orlando, Fla., Modern Healthcare Editor Merrill Goozner sat down with Faulkner for an interview. The following is an edited transcript.

Redefining the right to healthcare down.

With Republican leaders promising to quickly repeal the Affordable Care Act and only promising to enact a replacement, it's worth revisiting the question of whether healthcare is a right.

Which Scott Gottlieb will run the FDA?

Dr. Scott Gottlieb is by far the most conflicted person nominated to run the 111-year-old Food and Drug Administration. He's received payments from or invested in dozens of companies with business before the agency, earning millions of dollars in the process.

The high-deductible plan trap.

Republicans seem intent on pursuing a disastrous Obamacare replacement plan that couples catastrophic coverage with subsidized health savings accounts.

"We're seeing business models predicated on building value".

Dr. Farzad Mostasharl helped shape the electronic health record landscape from 2011 to 2013 as head of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. Today, he is CEO of Aledade, a Bethesda, Md.-based startup with 150 employees that manages physician-led accountable care organizations. Editor Merrill Goozner recently spoke with Mostashari about how the coming regulatory and political changes will affect his business, which manages ACOs for over 1,000 primary-care doctors in 15 states. The following is an edited excerpt.

End the slow-walk on payment reform.

Remember payment reform? Shared risk, bundled payments, global budgets-these baby steps are supposed to teach hospitals and physician practices how to stay on their feet financially while walking away from fee-for-service medicine.

Some benefits are essential.

The House of Representatives last week postponed voting to gut Obamacare after new provisions weakening the essential benefits guarantee failed to win support from right-wing Republicans, who oppose almost any form of subsidized health insurance.

'This shift to accountability and value is going to come up in any reform proposal'.

On May 15, Mike Slubowski, currently CEO of the $2.7 billion SCL Health with a dozen hospitals in Colorado, Kansas and Montana, becomes chief operating officer of Livonia, Mich.-based Trinity Health, a system about six times larger. He will be serving CEO Dr. Richard Gilfillan, who has pledged to turn the nation's second-largest Catholic- sponsored health system into a proving ground for the value-based care models he helped shape while leading the CMS' Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation. Editor Merrill Goozner spoke with Slubowski last week about the major challenges in his new role and the special challenges faced by exurban hospitals such as the ones he ran at SCL during 61/2 years there. The following is an edited transcript.

A bold proposal for Trumpcare 2.0.

It was notable that so many conservative activists and pundits rushed to abandon the Republican Party's promise to "repeal and replace" Obamacare in the wake of Trumpcare's humiliating defeat in the House of Representatives.

A false start in the fight against opioid addiction.

As with so much else, the Trump administration has stumbled in its initial efforts to combat opioid addiction. Given the magnitude of the crisis, healthcare professionals have an obligation to speak out against ill-considered policies.

The phony war on high drug prices.

Politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. Witness how the pharnaceutical industry has succeeded in taking advantage of President Donald Trump's failure to do something-anything-about high drug prices.

Playing with fire on cost-sharing subsidies.

It's time to check in with the governing party to see how its plan to replace Obamacare is progressing.

It's now or never to fix next year's exchange rates.

As the ad hoc committee of 13 Republican senators rethinks the increasingly unpopular American Health Care Act, Congress and the administration face a more pressing question. Will they stabilize the individual insurance market for 2018?