Insights: Policy

Medicare Advantage (Auto-Enrollment)

CMS Deputy Administrator Brooks said CMS has no immediate plans to automatically enroll Medicare beneficiaries into Medicare Advantage (MA) plans or accountable care organizations (ACOs), but left open the possibility that default enrollment could be a longer-term Medicare policy direction.

Drug Pricing (Most-Favored-Nation)

The White House Council of Economic Advisers released a report providing new details as to the administration’s voluntary Most-Favored-Nation (MFN) drug-pricing deals with 17 major pharmaceutical manufacturers. To date, the White House has only revealed high-level details as to how the deals will be operationalized and their impact.

Tech / Media / Telecom

AI Model Regulation

The Trump administration, via the NIST’s Center for AI Standards & Innovation (CAISI), announced voluntary agreements with Google, Microsoft, and xAI to conduct cybersecurity/national security evaluations of their frontier AI models, expanding earlier arrangements with OpenAI and Anthropic struck in 2024 under the Biden...

China – Trump/Xi Summit

President Trump will meet Chinese President Xi in Beijing on 5/14 to discuss the implementation of the bilateral trade truce. Trump administration officials are signaling that the meeting will yield modest results such Chinese purchases of U.S. goods, as opposed to a more sweeping agreement. Trump administration officials have indicated that...

Energy, Financials, Healthcare, Macro, Miscellaneous, Tech / Media / Telecom

Election Outlook

Our bottom-line view is that it’s likely (75%) that Democrats gain a House majority and marginally unlikely (<50%) that they gain a Senate majority. The macro political environment is very negative for Republicans, with President Trump’s approval rating having dropped below 40% for the first time, perception of the economy at historic lows, and...

Fertilizer/Iran

Driven by the conflict in Iran, global fertilizer prices are expected to rise by 31% in 2026, putting many farmers in a precarious financial position. Judging from the visibility of the reaction in Congress and the administration, fertilizer prices are among the most central areas of economic dislocation on which policy makers are focused. This...