O'Dwyer's: Narrative Strategies hires Geoff Holtzman

 

Geoff Holtzman

Narrative Strategies hires Geoff Holtzman as a senior director. Holtzman comes to the firm from national philanthropic organization Stand Together, where he served as director of communications and led strategic comms for the organization’s healthcare portfolio. He has also been director of communications at REFORM Alliance. At NS, he will work to bolster the key vertical that includes clients in the biopharmaceutical, medical technology and provider industries. “Geoff has a wealth of experience navigating an increasingly complex healthcare sector that demands deep knowledge and the ability to anticipate and react to developments in the legislative and regulatory landscape,” said Narrative CEO and Founding Partner Ken Spain. The firm also announced the addition of Hariana Sethi as a business development associate and Henry Lynam, Albert Sanchez and Davis Robinson as strategic communications associates.

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Politico Influence: Narrative Adds Geoff Holtzman

FIRST IN PI — NARRATIVE ADDS 5: Geoff Holtzman has left Stand Together, the Koch-backed group where he served as communications director, to join Narrative Strategies as a senior director. Holtzman, who also led strategic communications for Stand Together’s health care portfolio, will help Narrative continue to grow its own health portfolio.

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Politico Influence covers doctors event on Capitol Hill

And on Wednesday night at Rayburn House Office Building for a Market Institute happy hour to support site-neutral payment reforms, where guests were given 12 drink tickets to spend at either a "hospital-owned" bar charging 10 tickets per drink, or a "physician-owned" bar charging one ticket per drink, per a tipster: Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.), Lauren Stewart of Americans for Prosperity, Geoff Holtzman of Stand Together, James Davis of Touchdown Strategies and Charles Sauer of the Market Institute.

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Election Day doesn’t have to be anti-kids.

This week, my kids’ schools will be closed a total of 3 days. 2 of those are for teacher workdays at my youngest’s pre-school. “But you don’t have to pay for those 2 days, right?” Bless your heart. 

The other day is tomorrow, Super Tuesday. My oldest is barred from school because her school, like other public schools in our state, will be used as a polling place.

For some reason, Virginia and 18 other states where election days are civic holidays refuse to find a way to open the polls without robbing students of a day of learning. Never mind that reading and math scores are at their lowest level in decades. 

This is wrong. Election Day shouldn’t discriminate against students. 

There’s good news, though; it doesn’t have to be this way. If states are willing to be flexible, the solutions are abundant.

Here are 5 alternative (and secular) voting locations that would allow adults to continue participating in the democratic process while ensuring that our children are where they should be on a random Tuesday – in school.

1. Community parks and rec centers. There are more than 9,300 community parks and recreation centers in the U.S. I’d venture to guess that most of them are not crowded on a Tuesday. We could set up polling booths in sparsely used rec centers? For colder weather areas, we could stand up heated tents in a part of the park. “Eh, that sounds expensive.” Folks, you can buy a heated tent for $559. Let’s say states and localities get funding from Congress for 2 tents in 5,000 parks. That’s roughly $5.6 million. That’s a rounding error in Washington. When you factor in the economic benefit of keeping schools open an extra day and giving parents the ability to go to work, it’s probably a net gain in the long run.

2. Non-school government office buildings. Many local government office buildings, like Fairfax County’s government center, were converted into vaccination clinics when the first Covid-19 shots became available. There are 85,000 local governments in the U.S. I can’t find data on how many non-school facilities there are among those municipalities, but let’s assume conservatively, for the sake of argument, the number is half. That’s 42,500 buildings. If we can convert these buildings into vaccine clinics, we can convert them into polling places and have employees telework for the day.

3. Community colleges and larger 4-year public colleges and universities. “But now you’re closing one educational institution to keep another open!” I don’t find that argument super persuasive. Most elementary school students struggle to learn virtually. But for most college students, it’s easier. There are 1,000 community colleges in the U.S., plus hundreds more 4-year public colleges and universities. Take classes online for a day and convert those student unions into a polling station. Sure, it’s a sacrifice for college students, but a very small one in the grand scheme of things. Life is about tradeoffs.

4. Empty fairgrounds. This one’s a no-brainer to me. There are more than 1,350 fairgrounds in this beautiful country of ours. Order those heated tents ($559 x 2 x 1,350 = $1.5 million) and let’s do this.

5. Stadiums/arenas & parking lots. When the Covid vaccines rolled out, governments worked with stadium tenants to set up vaccination stations in stadium parking lots. Obviously, there isn’t a stadium or arena in every district. But let’s put on our thinking caps and get creative. Using the DC area as an example, is there a world in which voters from DC, Maryland and Virginia can vote at Nationals Park or Capital One Arena with partitioned lanes or quadrants for different districts? Call me a dreamer, but I think so.

Regardless of whom you vote for tomorrow, I think we can all agree that kids should be in school as much as possible. Voting shouldn’t come at the expense of discriminating against children. We can do much better.

On Nikki Haley and bringing back the "good old days"

Niki Haley tweeted recently that life was easier when “you were growing up.” Her point was that, if elected, she’d bring back the good old days where life was as simple as “faith, family, and freedom.” I’m not trying to pick on Nikki Haley — I agree with her on many things, such as the need for more personalized healthcare — but life was assuredly not that breezy in the mid-to-late 70s when Governor Haley was growing up. More to the point, though, I don’t believe that type of nostalgia, MAGA-lite message resonates with large audiences or even primary voters for that matter. 

Life may very well have been better when Gov. Haley was born — for some people. Affluent, suburban families, in particular. I’m one of those people, hooray for me. But 40-to-50 years from now, we should want all Americans — not just a select few — to feel that way about the past. The goal of policymaking today should be to ensure that all future generations can look back with honest fondness about their upbringing. 

This requires economic policies that prevent high inflation, spur low unemployment, and keep interest rates down. Like where our country was prior to the pandemic. Regulatory systems that promote innovation and technologies that make our lives easier, safer, and more affordable. An education framework that affords every child and family the opportunity to learn in the environment that best meets their unique needs. Progress on this front is underway, with states like Arizona and West Virginia leading the charge to dismantle the one-size-fits-all education model. And smart on crime strategies that protect public safety by focusing on violent crime while affording second chances to those who’ve paid their debt to society and want to transform their lives. 

That’s part of the policy roadmap that candidates must embrace if they’re interested in giving all Americans in the future a feeling of joy about the past. Of course, you can’t make policy if you aren’t elected and, as a general rule of thumb, you can’t get elected unless you sell your vision. Going back to Governor Haley for a moment; you can’t convince a majority of the country of your vision for the future if you spend too much time trying to invoke the glory days of the past that only a certain portion of Americans experienced. Even under the banner of “Make America Great Again,” Donald Trump offered a forward-looking vision (for example, a new foreign policy doctrine centered around taking on China). Sure, the nostalgia excited some Trump supporters, but most became sold on Trump’s promise of the future. 

Sure, the past was great for me. But I’m not interested in a country where only my peers and I feel good about the way things used to be. I want that feeling for everyone — my neighbors, people in inner cities, traditionally marginalized communities, new immigrants coming here in search of a better life than the one they’re leaving behind. Candidates running for the highest office in all the land should want that, too. It’s a good thing for our country but also good politics. To be perceived as fighting for everyone surely cannot hurt one’s bid for re-election. 

So, candidates, let’s leave the rose-colored nostalgia to Trump and start offering a vision for America that all of us will look back on one day with pride.

The truth about Medicare drug price “negotiation”

With Sen. Joe Manchin aboard, Senate Democrats are readying a vote on their mislabeled “Inflation Reduction Act.” The bill contains another mislabeled measure; allowing Medicare to “negotiate” the price of some pharmaceutical drugs. 

Bill supporters think the idea is popular with Americans based on push polls that have essentially asked if voters want the government to make their medicines cheaper. Who in their right mind would say no to that? 

What the special interests behind these polls usually fail to mention is that allowing Medicare to tell drug makers how much they can charge for their products or face a tax of up to 95% isn’t negotiation — it’s hostage taking. Furthermore, in every country that has experimented with price controls — whether on drugs or any other good — investment in the controlled product shrinks, and consumers are left with less access. 

That’s the reality facing Americans. According to University of Chicago health economist Tomas Philipson and his colleagues, legislation that passed the House last year and is very similar to the Senate’s current proposal would lead to as many as 135 fewer new drugs over the next two decades. While the CBO forecasts a much smaller impact, it underestimates the stifling nature price controls will have on innovation. 

CBO also doesn’t say which new drugs will be affected, but research shows that cancer R&D stands to take a massive hit under a price control regime. Philipson estimates that the impact on cancer treatments will reduce overall annual cancer R&D spending by about $18 billion per year. Patients would miss out on 9.4 times as many new cancer drugs as they would gain from President Biden’s cancer moonshot plan. 

The result? Higher cancer mortality rates and hundreds of millions of lives cut short. 331 million years to be exact, Philipson estimates. 

Supporters of price controls might feel emboldened by polling, but those surveys generally gloss over the steep tradeoffs involved with price caps. Moreover, most polls these days show that inflation — not prescription drug costs — is Americans’ top concern. Price controls, however, would do nothing to reduce medical inflation, which rose by 3% in June. That’s because prescription drugs represent a small sliver – just 10% – of the roughly $4 trillion America spends annually on health care. 

In fact, Philipson’s latest study shows that spending on pharmaceutical drugs is not driving overall health spending in the U.S. Annual drug spending has actually contributed negatively, -4.6%, to total annual total healthcare spending growth over the past two decades. Labor costs – not prescription meds – are the real culprit, accounting for more than 70% of total health spending. Philipson finds that drug price controls would increase total annual healthcare spending by $50.8 billion over the next two decades. 

A big reason why spending on prescription drugs is relatively low is because Americans have robust access to generic drugs that tend to be much less expensive than their brand name counterparts. It’s true that certain brand name drugs have high list prices, but price fixing is not the answer. A far better approach is for lawmakers to end drugmaker abuses such as patent evergreening, pay-for-delay agreements, “brand-name generics,” and anti-competitive use of Food and Drug Administration citizen-petitions. These and similar reforms would go a long way to promoting the kind of healthy, price-reducing competition Americans need. 

The Lower Costs, More Cures Act (H.R.19), the Prescription Drug Pricing Reduction Act of 2019 (S.S2543), and the Prescription Drug Pricing Reduction Act of 2020, S.4199 offer a good starting-point for bipartisan discussion. Happily, these reforms are nonpartisan and can be passed without controversy, unlike the innovation-stifling government price controls found in the Senate’s partisan reconciliation proposal. 

As we’ve learned from the remarkable success of COVID-19 vaccines, the key to unleashing private-sector innovation and abundance — and saving lives — is not to impose needless government barriers, but to remove them. Moreover, telling Americans that prescription drug price fixing will alleviate the pain of inflation, as the president has been doing, is misleading at best and an outright lie at worst. 

Instead of imposing price controls on pharmaceutical drugs, lawmakers should give Americans a personal option that controls drug costs naturally through robust, price-reducing competition, without shortages or stifling innovation.

The Center Square: As Democrats seek government control over prescription drugs, critics warn of consequences

Americans For Prosperity, a grassroots advocacy organization opposed to the plan, argues it would lead to drug rationing and stifle the development of new drugs in the future.

AFP spokesman Geoff Holtzman told The Center Square, “A rationing scheme like H.R. 3 that lets the government tell patients what medications they can take is the wrong prescription to bring down the cost of drugs. Instead of putting government in control of our medicine cabinets, Congress should give Americans a personal option that increases competition and cuts the red tape that makes drugs expensive to begin with.”

Lawmakers should instead support a personal option that expands access to affordable medications through increasing competition and choice, and promotes innovation. The personal option, a bottom-up alternative to a government takeover of health care, would reduce drug prices while boosting access to medication, AFP argues.

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The Center Square: Grassroots organization opposes prescription drug price legislation

Geoff Holtzman, spokesman for Americans for Prosperity, said the plan is deeply flawed and would cause more harm than good. 

“We all share the goal of making drug prices more affordable,” Holtzman said. “That is a priority, but we can’t do that at the expense of making drugs less accessible, because at the end of the day, what good is affordability if you can’t get the drug in the first place.” 

The organization believes a smarter approach would be to give Americans a personal option for prescription drugs that creates a greater supply of available medicines. It could be done by streamlining the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s drug approval process so that new drugs are approved as quickly as the COVID-19 vaccines were approved. 

Holtzman said the government should also remove barriers that block access to generic versions of drugs, and allow for more legal drug importation from other countries. 

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Variety: Jay-Z and Meek Mill’s Reform Alliance Makes Key Hires

 Jay-Z and Meek Mill’s Reform Alliance announced today that it has bolstered its executive leadership team with the hiring of Janet Choi as Chief Content and Communications Officer. Choi joined Reform this week from the New York City Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment, where she served as Deputy Commissioner and General Manager.

Reform has also announced a number of new key leadership hires who were previously leading or a part of the election campaigns of Barack Obama and Pete Buttigieg, Bono’s ONE Campaign, JPMorgan Private Bank, (RED), MarchOn and Stand Together, among others.

The organization’s new hires, who came on board over the past six months, include:

• Geoff Holtzman – Director of Communications:Holtzman directed communications for Stand Together’s criminal justice reform team, where he led the communications campaign for the passing of the First Step Act. He is responsible for developing and driving communications strategies that generate support for REFORM’s advocacy work.

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The Dispatch: California Just Passed Common-Sense Criminal Justice Reforms. Really.

REFORM Alliance Communications Director Geoff Holtzman told the Dispatch that probation reform is “fundamentally about restoring liberty to individuals, getting government out of their lives, and helping people earn redemption and a second chance.”

“This particular legislation not only saves taxpayers billions of dollars,” he said of California’s reform bill. “It creates safer communities and stronger families, unlocks freedom and opportunity for thousands of individuals, and reduces the number of people who the government can harass."

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My op-ed in RealClearPolicy: A Reform 'Law and Order' and 'Defund' Supporters Can Agree On

Americans are being told right now that our country has two options when it comes to delivering justice: A) institute law and order, or B) spend more on social programs. Turns out, voters actually want both.

Currently, 4.4 million people in the U.S. — 30% of them black — are on probation or parole. That’s about half the population of Virginia, where I live. Any one of these folks, at any time, could be sent to jail for doing something as harmless as missing a check-in with a supervising officer because they couldn’t leave work. As a result, each day in America 280,000 people are imprisoned for supervision violations.

Law and order means that there’s an order to our laws, but there’s nothing orderly about jailing someone who can’t afford to miss work. And a new survey conducted by Morning Consult on behalf of REFORM Alliance shows that voters in eight diverse states agree. These voters support changing the probation and parole systems to allow our country to maintain law and order, get tough on crime, honor victims, and invest in more programs that help rehabilitate formerly incarcerated people — all at the same time.

For example, after learning about the astronomical number of people under probation or parole supervision, majorities of voters in six out of eight states said it is important to reduce this number. This reduction was supported by voters in reliably blue New York and deep-red Georgia. After finding out that the U.S. spends $9.3 billion each year incarcerating people for violating parole or probation, a plurality of voters in all eight states said the nation needs to spend less.

Majorities of voters in all states said mentorship programs should be a hallmark of supervision. Pairing someone who’s experienced the system and successfully reentered society with someone looking to make the same transition would reduce recidivism, thereby lowering crime, saving taxpayer dollars, and producing more available job talent. Voters also agree that reinvesting tax dollars into programs aimed at solving root issues of crime — such as drug and mental health treatment — will help people reenter society more successfully while reducing incarceration.

Another key reform that appeals to voters is rewarding good behavior by people on probation and parole. Since her release from prison in 2018, Alice Johnson has become an author, speaker, and leader of a non-profit. As a result of her hard work, Johnson’s probation officer recommended that she be released from supervision, but that recommendation was ignored. Had Johnson not recently received a presidential pardon that wiped her slate clean, the 65-year-old grandmother would still be monitored today.

Supervision programs like probation and parole were originally intended to be an alternative to prison, giving people the support they needed to stay out of trouble and contribute to society. But these programs have deviated away from their purpose, trapping millions of people in the justice system at a steep cost to taxpayers with little demonstrable public safety benefit.

The good news is that Americans want changes. The better news is that these ideas are politically popular, as evidenced by this groundbreaking poll. But best of all is that these reforms will reduce racial disparities in the justice system by needlessly incarcerating fewer black people and ease the burden on law enforcement by reducing supervision caseloads. Everyone benefits. So, let’s get to work.

Geoff Holtzman serves as communications director for the REFORM Alliance.

My interview on IHeartMedia's Georgia Focus

REFORM Alliance is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization whose mission is to dramatically reduce the number of people who are unjustly under the control of the criminal justice system. Jessica Jackson, Chief Advocacy Officer, Geoff Holtzman, Director of Communications and Simone Price, Georgia State Campaign Organizer, discuss their work.

Harrisburg Patriot-News: New ad campaign aims to boost support for reforming Pa. probation system

The REFORM Alliance, a criminal justice reform group founded by rapper Meek Mill, is launching a new ad campaign to bolster public support and awareness. The group is posting billboards around the state and also launching a new digital campaign, including a video featuring those on probation aiming to turn their lives around.

“This is our window of opportunity and we’re taking full advantage of it,” said Geoff Holtzman, REFORM’s director of legislative communications.

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