Governor Pence Sends Letter To Indiana Delegation Urging Congressional Oversight

Pence notes that evaluation vendor has an institutional bias against HIP 2.0

 Indianapolis – Governor Mike Pence today sent a letter to members of the Indiana Congressional Delegation urging their Congressional oversight of the process by which the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services evaluates the impartiality of evaluation vendors. Along with the letter, Governor Pence said, “Hoosiers have no confidence that any objective result would be generated by an organization with an institutional bias against the consumer driven health care model that embodies HIP 2.0.”

Below are excerpts of Governor Pence’s letter:

“On December 3, 2015, I sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Burwell raising significant concerns about the objectivity of HHS’s planned second evaluation of the Healthy Indiana Plan (HIP) 2.0 and asked that it be terminated.  Secretary Burwell responded by letter on February 10, 2016 and stated that the duplicative federal evaluation would continue and that the vendor in question was chosen by following federal procurement rules.”
“Secretary Burwell’s response letter falls far short of assuring Hoosiers that the findings of the federal evaluation will be unbiased or provide results that we can be confident in. After all, any evaluation of HIP 2.0 must be conducted by an unbiased entity; otherwise, results generated by the evaluation will be subject to question and provide an unfair perspective on the program.”
“The subcontractor chosen to conduct the federal evaluation has demonstrated a clear institutional bias against the tenets of HIP 2.0, and the fact that the federal procurement process could allow for this type of selection speaks to the flaws or inadequacies in the vendor selection system.”
“I would respectfully request that in your Congressional oversight role you review the process by which the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services evaluates the impartiality of evaluation vendors, as well as the specific process and criteria used in the impartiality analysis when selecting the vendor for the federal evaluation of HIP 2.0.”

The letter in full can be found attached. Governor Pence’s letter to HHS Secretary Burwell from this past December and her response are also attached.