Careers
Health Care
Our Work
Recent Accomplishments
Ongoing Projects
Key Contacts
Our Work
The Health Care team leads GAO’s efforts in supporting congressional oversight of the federal agencies and programs that tangibly affect the lives of all Americans. Collectively, federal health care programs’ expenditures represent about one-quarter of all federal spending. Ensuring that these programs provide access to quality care, protect the public, and remain fiscally sustainable is one of the greatest challenges facing Congress and the President in the 21st century.
We provide analyses, recommendations, and policy options to Congress and the executive branch to help meet the needs of our aging and diverse population. For the following departments and agencies, we examine not only their achievement of program goals but also their management, information systems, human capital, and financial operations:
- Department of Health and Human Services, including the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the National Institutes of Health, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
- Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) Veterans Health Administration.
- Department of Defense’s (DOD) TRICARE.
- Food and Drug Administration.
Recent Accomplishments
- Strengthening Medicaid program integrity by alerting Congress to deficiencies in the staff and financial resources for states’ anti-fraud-and-abuse activities.
- Encouraging the use of competition and other cost-reducing techniques to set Medicare payments for durable medical equipment and supplies.
- Developing a planning model for managing excess VA property, including unused and underused facilities.
- Encouraging manufacturers of controlled substances to develop risk management plans that contain strategies for monitoring the use of these drugs and identifying potential abuse.
- Identifying significant shortcomings in efforts to protect nursing home residents from abuse and to ensure that home health beneficiaries receive quality care.
- Evaluating shortcomings in the quality of communications to the public about Medicare’s new prescription drug benefit and plan options.
- Identifying limitations in federal evacuation assistance for health facilities following the 2005 hurricane season.
Ongoing Projects
- Determining whether Medicare and Medicaid payment methods and rates and future health workforce subsidies need to be modified.
- Reviewing Medicare’s processes for covering procedures and ambulance services.
- Analyzing pharmaceutical pricing and practices to assess their effects on federally funded health care programs.
- Determining the extent to which states respond to Medicaid financing oversight.
- Reviewing the transition of dual-eligible beneficiaries from Medicaid prescription drug coverage to Medicare Part D coverage.
- Evaluating DOD’s proposals to restructure the fees for its health care delivery system and comparing the proposals to those of federal and private insurance health plans.
- Assessing key drivers of premium growth in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program and efforts of other major public and private employers to contain cost growth in employer-based health insurance coverage.
- Evaluating federal, state, and local preparedness to respond to naturally occurring disease outbreaks and bioterrorist attacks.
- Examining the allocation of user fees for medical device applications at the Food and Drug Administration.
- Assessing nurse and nurse anesthetist hiring and retention practices and potential for future staffing shortfalls at VA.
- Examining federal procedures to ensure the safety of biological laboratories.
- Analyzing policy options to respond to growing financial pressure on federal and state budgets to provide appropriate, high-quality long-term care services.
Key Contacts
Managing Director: Marjorie E. Kanof
Directors: Cynthia A. Bascetta, James C. Cosgrove, Marcia G. Crosse, John E. Dicken, Kathleen M. King, Linda T. Kohn, A. Bruce Steinwald, Randall B. Williamson
Phone: (202) 512-7114
Mailing Address:
U.S. Government Accountability Office
Health Care
Room 5A14
441 G Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20548