This month, the Health Care Payment Learning & Action Network formally acknowledged the Medicare Rights Center as a Committed Partner. Medicare Rights supports the goal of linking 50 percent of U.S. health care payments to quality and value through alternative payment models by 2018. Medicare Rights directly answers nearly 17,000 Medicare questions each year on its free, multilingual helpline, and as a Committed Partner Medicare Rights will provide counseling to ensure that its clients — beneficiaries, caregivers, and professionals — are educated about Medicare-related alternative payment models.

Medicare Rights’ also maintains an educational website, Medicare Interactive (www.medicareinteractive.org), which receives nearly two million visits each year, and will contain content that describes alternative payment models in legally vetted, consumer-friendly language.

Finally, Medicare Rights will also develop a set of consumer-oriented policy principles for informing the development and implementation of alternative payment models, building on the efforts of the Consumer & Patient Affinity Group (CPAG) of the LAN. In 2017, Medicare Rights will include these principles in a formal report to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and others on the changing Medicare landscape and how consumers and consumer advocates can become more empowered within it.