About M2

M2 Health Care Consulting started in May of 2005. We celebrated our 10 year anniversary last year, and we are still asked, what does the “M2” stand for? It is a story we tell often, and to health policy wonks, it is at least somewhat amusing!

For most of my career, the federal agency that administered Medicare and Medicaid was called the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA). In 2001, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) changed the name from HCFA to CMS. If you are in this line of work, you know that CMS stands for Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. You may have also have wondered why the acronym is not CMMS. Why only one “M”? And why does Medicare come before Medicaid? That isn’t even in alphabetical order.

While I admit I don’t know the real reason one “M” was dropped or why Medicare comes first (feel free to email me with the answer!), I do know, that state Medicaid programs are endlessly fascinating and I knew I could dedicate my work to understanding these programs and making them better.

The “M2” stands for the second M in CMS. We just thought if CMS wasn’t going to rename themselves CMMS, we could do our part to remind the health care policy world that there are two “Ms” that form the base of the U.S. health care system.