Dear Senators,

I commend you for your commitment to working together, in a bipartisan fashion, to create the comprehensive health care reform legislation we need to drive down costs, dramatically improve quality and expand coverage to every America.  Your leadership is much appreciated. I cannot, however, commend the mix of speakers for your first roundtable on April 21.  For a roundtable that is nominally focused on reforming our delivery system and increasing quality of care, it's become obvious who will get the loudest voice.  Of the initial twelve invited speakers, four of them have current or past ties to the private insurance industry.  Dr. Allan M. Korn and Mr. Roy William's connections are obvious.  Mr. Glenn Hackbarth spent many profitable years as an executive for Harvard Community Health Plan.  Lastly, Dr. Glenn Steele is connected to the HMOs and PPOs of the Geisinger Health Plan. By your selections, those with connections to private insurance outnumber those representing the actual health care delivery system -- doctors, nurses, administrators who are on the front-lines of care.  Although the VA has an impressive track record on chronic disease management, Health IT and coordinated care, no administrator or provider from the VA is speaking.  Although the Mayo Clinic and the medical home model in use by the City of San Francisco have exciting positive experiences that we could learn from, no one from those institutions have been invited to speak. I urge you to present a more carefully balanced mix of perspectives in future hearings.  Insurance shouldn't be excluded, but there is no earthly reason why they should dominate so definitively.  That they do so on April 21 raises serious questions. Certainly private insurance offers a perspective that needs to be included as part of the mix.  But you well know that private insurance currently derives tremendous profits off the system the way it is, and already has the loudest voice on decisions relating to our care.  They shouldn't also have the loudest voice in deciding what health care reform we'll get.

[Your name here]