Health Organizations Approach D.C. Rumble With New CEOs
The Better Medicare Alliance and Altarum will help shape Medicare solvency discussions.
Two groups that will help shape Medicare solvency battles have new CEOs.
The board of Better Medicare Alliance — a Washington-based organization for Medicare Advantage plans and their supports — has picked Mary Beth Donahue to succeed Allyson Schwartz as that group’s president and CEO.
The board of Altarum — a nonprofit health policy think tank base in Ann Arbor, Michigan — has named Michael Monson to succeed Lincoln Smith as its president and CEO.
Mary Beth Donahue
Allyson Schwartz is a Democrat who represented a Philadelphia-area district in the U.S. House from 2005 through 2015.
Her successor, Donahue, has been executive director of Kidney Care Partners, a coalition of manufacturers, dialysis professionals, care providers, researchers and others with an interest in kidney dialysis.
Earlier in her career, she was chief of staff to U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Donna Shalala, at time when HHS was setting up the program that eventually became the Medicare Advantage program.
Donahue also has been an executive vice president of advocacy and operations at America’s Health Insurance Plans.
She has a bachelor’s degree from Boston College and a master’s degree in public policy from Georgetown University.
Michael Monson
Lincoln Smith, the longtime head of Altarum, started out as a health care management improvement researcher.
Monson has been working for Centene Corp., a Clayton, Missouri-based company that runs Medicaid managed care plans and other health plans.
Monson has overseen Centene’s care quality research program; a program that helps health care providers work with community organizations to serve low-income patients; and Centene’s Medicaid and complex care programs.
Monson started out working as a nonprofit organization consultant at McKinsey, and then as a manager for a home health care organization in New York.
He has a bachelor’s degree in communications from the University of Pennsylvania and a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard.
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