Jackson Hammond is a Senior Policy Analyst at Paragon Health Institute. He has been active in the federal and state health policy space since 2017.
Prior to joining Paragon, Jackson was a health care policy analyst for American Action Forum (AAF). While at AAF, his work focused on payer issues including private insurance, Medicare, and Medicare Advantage. Furthermore, Jackson wrote extensively about the 340B Program and contributed to AAF’s research on a variety of drug pricing issues.
On August 8, 2024, Paragon’s blog “Bailing Out Bad Policy,” by Jackson Hammond, was quoted in Inside Health Policy.
From the article:
CMS’ last-minute Medicare Part D premium stabilization demonstration amounts to a potential $10 billion bailout for insurers so the administration can avoid headlines about massive Part D premium increases during an election year, a Paragon Health Institute analysis says this week as Republican lawmakers urge the congressional watchdog to investigate the new demo’s legality and cost.
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The Paragon Health Institute is also highly skeptical of the program, estimating it will cost more than $10 billion over three years and saying it can’t be classified as voluntary due to the competitive advantage participants will receive.
“Unlike this massive subsidization scheme, demonstrations are supposed to be limited in nature and test alternative features of program design,” Jackson Hammond, a senior policy analyst at the Institute, said in a website post. “As a result of the IRA changes, insurers that don’t participate are expected to either be uncompetitive from a price perspective or face significant losses — hardly a choice for insurers.”
The new demonstration uses risk corridors to reduce any insurer losses, Hammond says, but this means taxpayers will assume more risk at lower levels of losses and the standard level of take on insurers’ profits will continue.
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