Citizen Engagement Blog

Healthcare is a touchy subject. Throw in program management complexities government healthcare participants don’t see and your program will develop chronic aches and pains at the 10-point level.

For example, the well-publicized, glitch-filled Affordable Care Act enrollment launch last year shined a spotlight on citizen frustration with government health insurance programs. The Healthcare.gov website has since been fixed, but the fallout has been slower to dissipate. State and local health programs, particularly Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and the health insurance exchanges (HIX) are under greater scrutiny than ever.

Navigating the procurement RFP process has always been tricky. At a recent conference, Karen Painter-Jaquess, Director of the State Systems Office in the USDA Food and Nutrition Service, offered these best practices for State EBT Administrators to engage successfully with vendors and obtain optimal contracts with their SNAP and WIC procurement processes.