Panel 3 – Executive Insights: The Practical Impacts of Payment Policy on Incentives, Timing, and Outcomes

July 22, 2026
11:30 am-

12:05 pm

What does the payment landscape look like from inside the organizations navigating it every day, and what’s the one thing on the horizon more people should get smart on? From the vantage point of leaders building and negotiating within the current system, this session offers the candid, strategic perspective that traditional policy forums rarely capture, a high-level exchange on where the payment system is heading and what it could take to move it. 

By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

  • Understand how senior leaders across different sectors of the health care payment ecosystem are experiencing current market and policy dynamics.
  • Identify emerging trends and near-term developments that executive leaders are monitoring and preparing for.
  • Recognize the opportunities and constraints that shape organizational decision-making around payment innovation.

Speakers:

  • Moderator: Claire Sheahan, M.Sc., President and CEO, Alliance for Health Policy
  • Erin Richardson, J.D., M.S., Senior Vice President, Policy & Regulatory Affairs, Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc.
  • Amanda Bartelme, Executive Director, Policy, Eisai Inc.

Speakers

Claire Sheahan, M.Sc.

President and CEO, Alliance for Health Policy
Claire is the Chief Executive Officer at the Alliance for Health Policy. She is a dynamic executive with more than 25 years of experience effectively engaging others to catalyze change in health care and health policy.  Claire has served in leadership roles in associations, corporations,  consulting and communications firms, including GMMB, the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, Fleishman Hillard, the Generic Pharmaceutical Association (now AAM), Avalere, Alexion Pharmaceuticals, and others. In these roles, she has managed effective educational and engagement campaigns, introduced new capabilities, products and services, established novel cross-functional teams, and successfully achieved gains in reputational status, growth and audience impact.  In her career, she has worked for organizations across the spectrum in health care ranging from scientific discovery to public health to patient advocacy.  These include non-profits like the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and National Health Council; medical leaders like the American Academy of Family Physicians, the International Society for Stem Cell Research and Mayo Clinic; and companies like Biogen, Cigna, and Siemens Health.  Claire is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, where she served a semester as a research assistant to a member of UK parliament, and a co-founder of the campus sketch comedy troupe. She also holds an MSc. with Distinction from the London School of Economics in Media and Communications, where her dissertation focused on the construct of public opinion within the halls of the U.S. Congress. Claire also served as an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University, teaching students in the Communications MA program. She is the mother of two children, a cancer survivor, and serves as a Director on the Fairfax Library Foundation Board.

Amanda Bartelme

Executive Director, Policy, Eisai Inc.
Amanda Bartelme serves as Executive Director, Policy at Eisai, Inc. In this role, she leads Eisai’s engagement with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), focusing on ensuring Medicare beneficiaries have appropriate access to treatments. Ms. Bartelme also provides internal support on issues related to access, reimbursement and drug pricing, as well as represents Eisai on workgroups with PhRMA and BIO focused on these areas. Prior to joining Eisai in May 2022, Ms. Bartelme was Director of Coding and Reimbursement, US Public Policy at GSK, where she supported access to vaccines, oncology, respiratory, rheumatology, HIV, and Covid treatments. She also served as Associate Director at Policy and Reimbursement at Baxalta, where she focused on hemophilia, oncology, and plasma-based therapies. Ms. Bartelme began her career in health policy and reimbursement at Avalere Health, where she spent over a decade working on access for drugs, devices, and services with a special focus on physician administered drugs, diabetes, biosimilar payment policy, the 340B program, and the evolving drug pricing and payment landscape. Ms. Bartelme earned her Bachelor of Science degree from Cornell University. She has authored articles published in The Journal of Diabetes Science and Technology, as well as Diabetes Therapeutics & Technology.

Erin Richardson, J.D., M.A.

Senior Vice President, Policy & Regulatory Affairs, Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc.
Erin Richardson is the Senior Vice President of Policy and Regulatory Affairs at Kaiser Permanente where she leads a team focused on shaping Kaiser Permanente's policy and regulatory agenda at the federal and state levels. Previously, Erin was most recently Chief of Staff for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which provides health insurance coverage to over 150 million people through Medicare, Medicaid, and the Marketplaces. Prior to CMS, she was Senior Vice President and Counsel at the Federation of American Hospitals (FAH). She also served as Senior Policy Advisor in the White House Domestic Policy Council (DPC) under President Obama. Prior to DPC, she served on the Hill as professional staff and health counsel for the Democratic staff of the Committee on Ways and Means, Health Subcommittee and as Legislative Assistant for Health for Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio. She came to Washington, DC as a Winston Health Policy Fellow at the Committee on Ways and Means.
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