Excerpt

Jeff Grant: Thanks folks, it’s really great to be here. I am really disappointed that you don’t get to have the full marketplace team here. As some of you may be aware, we have not had any conference attendance say for I think now two CMS senior leaders that were allowed to go to the AHIP conference last week, but with the transition we’ve had this kind of unprecedented shut down of discussion at conferences like this which I will be talking a little bit about about the creative tension that’s going on inside the new administration.

I call this a tale of two governments and I really do believe that you have two governments that are in conflict right now with themselves at the federal level, and that is going to be very significant for how things go this year. And as long as this lasts for many years to come. Everybody knows The Tale of Two Cities, right? “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” This is “It was the best of governments, it was the worst of governments.”