EXCLUSIVE — Advocacy organizations run by major political donors were given an inside and publicly undisclosed role in shaping healthcare policy under former President Joe Biden, previously unreported government records show.
Emails obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request by the Public Health Reform Alliance and shared exclusively with the Washington Examiner show that top Biden administration officials turned to Arnold Ventures and the Commonwealth Fund to advise them on health policy and provided them with access to power brokers at private dinners and happy hours. A Washington Examiner review of campaign finance records found that the leadership of both philanthropies has collectively donated millions of dollars to Democratic political efforts over the years, in some cases to Biden.
“Federal agencies are supposed to be independent of everyone and everything but the president and the law,” PHRA Director Martin Hoyt told the Washington Examiner. “Ethical rules and statutes demand that outsiders — in this case, almost insiders, well-connected with back-channel access and ideologically simpatico — don’t have more say than taxpayers in federal government policy. That doesn’t seem to have made a difference to the Biden administration. I hope the new administration understands that some of these Biden appointees have burrowed into the career ranks.”
Arnold Ventures and the Commonwealth Fund’s access went straight to the top in the Biden administration’s Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, as then-CMS Director Meena Seshamani made herself available to both groups.
In a Jan. 13, 2022, email, for instance, Seshamani referenced the “continued collaboration” between CMS and the Commonwealth Fund. One day later, Seshamani personally approached the healthcare team at Arnold Ventures via email, asking for their input on Medicare Advantage risk adjustment, a key policy change. A Commonwealth Fund staffer, similarly, discussed the “ongoing collaboration” between the philanthropy and agency in an April 2022 message.
Leaders at the duo of philanthropic organizations are politically well-connected, particularly to the institutional Left.
Former healthcare executive Lois Quam, who sits on the Commonwealth Fund’s board of directors, has donated roughly $270,000 to Democratic political committees since 2016, including $5,600 to Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign, campaign finance records show. Contributions aside, Quam is embedded in the Democratic establishment through personal relationships, having served as a special adviser in the State Department during the Obama administration and working under then-first lady Hillary Clinton in the early ’90s.
Alan Jones, a successful investment banker, also sits on the board of the Commonwealth Fund. Since 2016, he has contributed roughly $2.7 million to Democratic political committees, including $60,000 to Biden’s 2020 campaign, according to Federal Election Commission records.
The bulk of the remaining Commonwealth Fund board members have made smaller, yet sizable, contributions to Democratic political committees over the years.
The Commonwealth Fund used its access to, among other things, push for greater equity in public healthcare — a common goal among left-of-center activists. The word “equity” frequently appears in communications between CMS and the two advocacy organizations.
“Hi Laurie, so great to reconnect with you just now,” Seshamani wrote to a senior Commonwealth Fund staffer in a December 2021 email. “I am adding Carie here who can send along the meeting request form so then we can schedule time for us to talk w[ith] your team about all things equity and value based care in the new year.”
The meeting discussed by the two women occurred in March 2022. It involved introducing CMS bureaucrats to Commonwealth Fund staffers to discuss “health equity,” Medicare priorities, and “explore opportunities for CMWF/CMS collaborations and potential synergies across projects.”
This was not an isolated incident, as Seshamani followed up a few weeks after her initial inquiry with then-Commonwealth Fund President David Blumenthal, expressing her eagerness to hear his “thoughts, questions, and feedback” relating to the Biden administration’s strategic plan for Medicare.
While not a major donor, Blumenthal is connected to the Democratic establishment through his work as a senior adviser on the Biden campaign, his subsequent senior role in the Obama administration, and his older brother‘s position as a senior senator from Connecticut.
The Commonwealth Fund denied that donations made by its leadership contributed to its access.
“The Commonwealth Fund has a decades-long history of producing evidence-based health policy research and serving as a trusted nonpartisan source of evidence and data for policymakers on both sides of the aisle,” the organization told the Washington Examiner. “The Fund’s Board members may make legal allowable political contributions in their private capacities; there is no connection between these activities and the Fund’s work.”
CMS’s relationship with the Commonwealth Fund was not confined to business hours.
In November 2022, Seshamani accepted an invitation to a dinner held by the nonprofit organization to commemorate Blumenthal’s 10th year leading it. The event was held at Old Ebbitt Grill, one of the oldest restaurants in Washington and one of the closest to the White House. Seshamani scored another invitation in April 2023 when the Commonwealth Fund invited her to a rooftop happy hour hosted in a K Street penthouse.
“The Commonwealth Fund is a century-old nonprofit, nonpartisan health care foundation,” the organization told the Washington Examiner. “We fund independent research on health care issues aimed at improving the U.S. health care system, because we believe evidence-based health policy is essential to assuring we all have access to high-quality, affordable health care. We work to educate and inform Republican, Democratic, and independent policymakers at all levels, as well as health care leaders and the public. Throughout our history, leaders at government agencies under administrations of both parties have called upon our evidence and data to inform policy and practice.”
John Arnold, a former hedge fund manager worth roughly $3 billion, is the man behind Arnold Ventures.
While some in the conservative media have characterized Arnold as a liberal, campaign finance records show that he donates large sums of money to both sides of the aisle. Arnold’s behavior matches that of many business interests that cut checks to Republicans and Democrats in the hopes of gaining access to the policymaking process, regardless of who is in charge. Research conducted by academic political scientists supports the claim that political donations increase access to government officials.
Indeed, Arnold Ventures has communicated with CMS across various presidential administrations, including under the first Trump administration.
Arnold has donated close to $6.7 million to various political committees since 2016, FEC records show. His largest contributions have been to super PACs that support candidates from both parties, such as the Bipartisan Climate Fund and the Bipartisan Network PAC. Arnold has also transferred large amounts to Democratic PACs, such as the $130,000 he gave to the House Majority PAC between 2018 and 2020 and the $77,350 he provided to various state Democratic parties since 2016.
Representatives working with Arnold Ventures enjoyed similar levels of access as those affiliated with the Commonwealth Fund. Arnold Ventures’s executive vice president of healthcare, Mark Miller, for instance, provided Molly Turco, then a senior policy adviser at CMS, with a “rough list of [diagnosis] coding cases,” a key component in rate-setting, shortly after the agency reached out to the philanthropy for advice. Tim Engelhardt, director of the CMS Medicare-Medicaid Coordination Office, also sent an email from the lead of Arnold Ventures’s Medicaid team to Seshamani and another senior CMS staffer.
“As a philanthropy that focuses on evidence-based policies to solve America’s most pressing problems, Arnold Ventures has a long history of working with CMS staff across administrations — including current and past staff under President Trump,” a spokeswoman for the organization told the Washington Examiner. “The policies we work on are designed to lower health care costs for Americans, so they have consistently been of interest to leaders across the political spectrum.”
HHS SECRETLY COORDINATED WITH DEMOCRATIC DONOR-LINKED GROUPS TO SHAPE IRA IMPLEMENTATION
Both the Commonwealth Fund and Arnold Ventures appeared pleased with how CMS was operating under their influence, publishing materials praising the agency during Biden’s tenure in the White House.
Prior emails obtained by the Washington Examiner revealed that the Department of Health and Human Services under Biden maintained a secret chat with members of over two dozen liberal advocacy organizations connected to influential donors to coordinate policy implementation and messaging concerning the Inflation Reduction Act.
