![\"\"](\"\/sph\/files\/2021\/06\/bryan-kirk-updated-1.png\")
Kirk, who earned his MPH with a certificate in health policy and management, is a health insurance specialist for the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight (CCIIO), a division of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). One of his many responsibilities is to lead a team that reviews public insurance plans for discriminatory behavior in benefit design and in cost sharing\u2014ensuring, for example, that plans don\u2019t discriminate by age by only covering hearing aids for young patients, or that plans don\u2019t place annual dollar limits on essential services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHealth equity is something that I\u2019m really passionate about,\u201d says Kirk. \u201cI love all the work that I do, but the non-discrimination work I get to lead is my favorite.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kirk joined CMS in 2019 after graduating from SPH and then working with the Peace Corps in Belize. In addition to reviewing plans for compliance with ACA rules, he also conducts URL reviews, confirming that the information insurers post online about their plans matches the information they\u2019ve supplied to CMS. \u201cIf that consumer-facing information is out of alignment with what we\u2019ve approved, with what the state has approved, that directly causes consumers harm,\u201d Kirk says. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of confusion if that stuff doesn\u2019t match up.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another part of Kirk\u2019s job is managing large IT projects aimed at making CCIIO more efficient. His first big project was building a new system for collecting URLs from insurance providers. In the past, if insurers wanted to update any of the links on healthcare.gov that lead to information about their plans, it took four to six weeks to process the data-change request. Today, the process takes just a week or two.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Working for CMS can be challenging, Kirk says, because the center\u2019s work is so very complicated: insurance regulations vary from state to state, different states have different models for their marketplaces, and Kirk and his colleagues can only do what is explicitly outlined in the law. But the work is also rewarding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cUltimately, what drives us all to do our work in CMS,\u201d Kirk says, \u201cis getting quality, affordable health care to people. CMS is really mission driven in a way that I haven\u2019t necessarily experienced in other places I\u2019ve worked. Everybody really cares, and we want to do as much as we possibly can to get to that outcome for people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Helping to operate our county\u2019s healthcare system has reinforced Kirk\u2019s belief that health care in the United States needs to be simpler and has inspired him to pursue a doctorate in public health. He began the doctoral program in health policy at George Washington University last fall, he says, with the goal of moving from operations roles to roles that focus on changing policy. \u201cI really want to keep climbing up and doing as much as I can to help improve the US healthcare system,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
According to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), insurance plans listed on public health insurance exchanges must cover all essential health benefits and must not include provisions that discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, disability, age, or sex. But who is checking to ensure that\u2019s the case? For exchanges in Arizona, Georgia, Florida, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15205,"featured_media":196819,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"bu_prepress_billboard":"","_bu_prepress_primary_term":"health insurance","_bu_prepress_primary_term_manual":""},"tags":[1750,2013,3420,2548,2023],"bu-publication":[3516],"sphnews-article-category":[3519,3520,3535,3563],"sphnews-topic":[],"bu_edition":[],"media_type":[],"profile_tax":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/196586"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/bu-article"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15205"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196586"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/196586\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":196839,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/196586\/revisions\/196839"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196586"},{"taxonomy":"bu-publication","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-publication?post=196586"},{"taxonomy":"sphnews-article-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sphnews-article-category?post=196586"},{"taxonomy":"sphnews-topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sphnews-topic?post=196586"},{"taxonomy":"bu_edition","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu_edition?post=196586"},{"taxonomy":"media_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media_type?post=196586"},{"taxonomy":"profile_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile_tax?post=196586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}