Advocacy

Our advocacy is broader than just political advocacy; we are your voice in the public policy arena with regulators, the media, health plans and the broader patient community. We continue to push an agenda that’s focused on benefitting you professionally, while also working to improve the health and wellness of your patients.

Our Public Affairs team works on dozens of issues at the state capitol every year. Here are just a few of CMS’ notable achievements at the state capitol over the last five years:

Managed Care Reforms

  • Passed first-in-the-nation legislation to standardize health plan contracts.
  • Passed groundbreaking legislation allowing physicians to review and appeal the methodology behind commercial health and workers compensation carriers’ physician ratings systems.
  • Passed a key administrative simplification bill requiring health plans to standardize their claims edits.

Patient Safety and Professional Liability

  • Beat back attempts to destabilize Colorado’s medical liability environment.
  • Introduced landmark patient safety legislation to begin the process of moving Colorado away from fault-based liability and give injured patients alternatives for dealing with medical error.

Access to Care

  • Successfully lobbied to increase primary care reimbursements rates in the Medicaid program to 95% of Medicare rates.
  • Supported legislation that increases access to care by increasing Medicaid and CHP+ eligibility levels without draining general fund dollars.

Public Health

  • Supported efforts to expand physical education classes and healthy lunch choices in schools to address the growing childhood obesity epidemic.

View our 2018 public policy priorities here.

To learn more about CMS’ Public Affairs activities or sign up for our ASAP alerts, contact:

Susan Koontz, General Counsel and Senior Director of Government Relations
(720) 858-6327
susan_koontz@cms.org