Justine Handelman

Prior to founding Handelman Strategies, Justine served as the senior vice president of policy and advocacy for the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association (BCBSA). The association is a national federation of 34 independent, community-based and locally operated Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) companies and is the nation’s largest health insurer. Collectively, they provide coverage to more than 115 million people. In this prominent role, Justine oversaw BCBSA policy, lobbying, and public affairs activities and represented BCBSA and BCBS companies before the administration, Congress, government agencies, and other national associations. Over the course of her tenure at BCBSA, Justine worked extensively on key health care legislation and regulations, including the Medicare Modernization Act, Affordable Care Act, No Surprises Act, Inflation Reduction Act as well as legislation to prevent opioid abuse and address mental health parity, and legislation for response to the COVID-19 pandemic, among others.    

Before joining BCBSA, Justine served as the director of the Health Care Practice Group in the Government Relations Division of Smithbucklin. In this highly visible role, she was responsible for day-to-day government-relations activities for several non profit professional medical-specialty societies and healthcare organizations. Justine began her distinguished career as a senior legislative associate at MARC Associates, Inc.