Good news for Americans worried that the health insurance industry lacks a voice in Washington: @MAHA_Action is finally giving it a platform. The summit’s “Affordability First” panel features executives from UnitedHealth Group and Elevance Health, alongside the head of AHIP, the health insurance industry’s trade association. A senior CMS official will moderate. No patient advocate is listed on the panel. An inspired arrangement. If you want to understand why dinner is so expensive, assemble the restaurant owner, the landlord, and the company that charges you a convenience fee for looking at the menu. The customer can submit a question through the portal. There is something beautifully efficient about putting the insurance industry in charge of the affordability conversation. Usually, Americans have to spend forty-five minutes on hold to hear an insurer explain their financial circumstances to them. Here, the explanation comes with stage lighting. And “Affordability First” is an excellent title. It leaves the essential follow-up question, affordable for whom?The answer is available for a future breakout session. Remember, this is the political movement whose leading health official, @RobertKennedyJr declared: “We are ending the corporate capture of public health.” Apparently, the treatment involves exposure therapy. Start with a small dose of corporate leadership. Increase gradually until the patient can enter a ballroom full of executives without remembering why they were angry. Later, the summit offers “Prevention at Scale,” featuring the CEOs of @Ascensionorg , @SutterHealth, and @advocatehealth. Between the two panels, the institutions that finance care and the institutions that deliver it enjoy a substantial opportunity to explain the future. The person trying to figure out whether they can afford an MRI remains an exciting opportunity for stakeholder engagement. Imagine a different affordability panel. A patient brings a bill. A physician brings the paperwork required to get treatment approved. An insurance executive gets a microphone and has to explain both. That would be a useful conversation. It might also run over 30 minutes, particularly if someone insisted on answering the question. Instead, this lineup offers the familiar Washington comfort of discussing people’s problems at a professional distance from the people having them. From the stage, a medical bill can become a challenge involving incentives, innovation, and complex systems. At the kitchen table, it remains a number you cannot pay. The appeal of an anti-establishment movement is the promise that someone will finally make the powerful uncomfortable. Looking at these panels, the powerful appear to have been accommodated quite thoughtfully. There is a chair. There is a microphone. There is a moderator to keep things moving. For everyone who thought making America healthy again might involve making its health care institutions answer to patients, please be patient. Your revolution is important to us. Please remain on the line.