Vanderbilt surgeon Manny Sethi to testify before Senate panel on health insurance

Aug. 31--WASHINGTON -- A Vanderbilt University surgeon who founded a nonprofit organization that promotes preventive health care will testify next month before a Senate committee looking for ways to strengthen the individual health insurance market.

Dr. Manny Sethi will appear before the Senate Health, Education Labor and Pensions Committee on Sept. 14, along with other health care stakeholders representing doctors, hospitals, insurers, patients, and insurance commissioners.

The hearing is one of a series the committee is holding as senators look for a bipartisan approach to stabilize the individual health insurance market. The bipartisan hearings come on the heels of the Senate's failure to pass legislation to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, the Tennessee Republican who chairs the committee, has said the goal is for lawmakers on the panel to agree on a "small, bipartisan and balanced" fix for the individual market by mid-September so that insurance companies can set their premiums for 2018.

Alexander also wants to increase flexibility for states to determine the policies they offer through a section of the law that allows states to apply for waivers.

Tennessee Insurance Commissioner Julie Mix McPeak and insurance commissioners from other states will testify before the committee on Sept. 6. The next day, the panel will hear from Gov. Bill Haslam and governors from four other states.

At the Sept. 14 hearing, Sethi will be joined by Dr. Susan L. Turney, chief executive officer of the Marshfield Clinic Health System in Wisconsin; Robert Ruiz-Moss, vice president of the individual market segment for Anthem Inc.; Christina Postolowski of Young Invincibles in Denver; and Raymond G. Farmer, director of the South Carolina Department of Insurance.

The committee also has scheduled a hearing on Sept. 12 to hear from various health care experts on ways to increase state flexibility in the individual health insurance market.

Sethi's appearance before the committee will not be the first time he has offered federal officials advice on health care reform.

In March, Sethi was among 11 people from across the country who met with President Donald Trump at the White House during a "listening session" on health care.

Sethi told Trump that many Tennesseans can't afford the high premiums and are choosing to pay the tax penalty imposed under the Affordable Care Act because it's cheaper than buying insurance.

"That has been a big problem we've been seeing across the state," Sethi said at the time.

Sethi also stressed that while most of the focus right now is on the cost of health insurance, preventive care is essential if the health delivery system is to be transformed.

Sethi, an orthopedic trauma surgeon at Vanderbilt, and his wife, Maya, are founders of Healthy Tennessee, which promotes preventive health care.

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