Archives


Speakers include (in alphabetical order):

​​​Gerard Anderson, is a professor of health policy and management and professor of international health at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School Public Health, professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Hospital Finance and Management. His work encompasses studies of chronic conditions, comparative insurance systems in developing countries, medical education, health care payment reform, and technology diffusion. He has directed reviews of health systems for the World Bank and USAID in multiple countries. Anderson has authored two books on health care payment policy, published over 250 peer reviewed articles, testified in Congress over 40 times as an individual witness, and serves on multiple editorial committees. Prior to his arrival at Johns Hopkins, Anderson held various positions in the Office of the Secretary, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, where he helped to develop Medicare prospective payment legislation.

Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC.  He is frequently cited in economics reporting in major media outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, CNBC, and National Public Radio.  He writes a weekly column for the Guardian Unlimited (UK), the Huffington Post, TruthOut, and his blog, Beat the Press, features commentary on economic reporting.  His analyses have appeared in many major publications, including the Atlantic Monthly, the Washington Post, the London Financial Times, and the New York Daily News. He received his Ph.D in economics from the University of Michigan. Dean previously worked as a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute and an assistant professor at Bucknell University. He has also worked as a consultant for the World Bank, the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress, and the OECD’s Trade Union Advisory Council.  Baker was the author of the weekly online commentary on economic reporting, the Economic Reporting Review (ERR), from 1996 – 2006. Baker has been a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance since 1998.

​​​Richard Baron, M.D., board certified in internal medicine and geriatrics, is President and CEO of the American Board of Internal Medicine and the ABIM Foundation. Baron was a former Chair of the American Board of Internal Medicine’s Board of Directors. Previously, Baron served as Group Director of Seamless Care Models at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Innovation Center, where he led efforts related to Accountable Care Organizations and primary care. Prior to his CMS appointment, Baron practiced general internal medicine and geriatrics at Greenhouse Internists, P.C., located in Philadelphia. Before joining the federal government, Baron also served on the Board of the National Quality Forum and their Health Information Technology Advisory Committee, as well as the Standards Committee of the National Committee for Quality Assurance. Baron served as Chief Medical Officer of Health Partners, a not-for-profit Medicaid HMO set up by four teaching hospitals in Philadelphia, from 1988 to 1996. He was the architect of the Best Clinical and Administrative Practices program, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Center for Health Care Strategies. Baron received an English degree from Harvard College and his medical degree from Yale University. Baron completed house staff training at New York University-Bellevue Medical Center and served a three-year obligation in the National Health Service Corps in rural Tennessee.

​​​Jennie Chin Hansen is CEO of the American Geriatrics Society (AGS) and immediate past president of AARP. In May 2010, she completed her two-year term as AARP President, leading the organization through the national debate over health care reform. Prior to that position, she had served six years on the AARP national board of directors. In 2008, Hansen completed a six-year term as a federal commissioner of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC). In 2010 she served as an IOM member on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Initiative on the Future of Nursing. She currently serves as a board member of the SCAN Foundation and a board officer of the National Academy of Social Insurance. She also serves as a board member of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), the American Hospital Association (AHA) Equity of Care Committee and is also co-chair of the steering committee for the Coalition to Transform Advanced Care (C-TAC). Hansen has received multiple awards over the years including the 2002 Gerontological Society of America Maxwell Pollack Award for Productive Aging, an honorary doctorate from Boston College in 2008, a 2010 Innovator in Health Award from the New England Healthcare Institute and the 2011 Picker Award for Excellence in the Advancement of Patient-Centered Care in Long-Term Care. Hansen has been a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance since 2002.

​​​Patrick Conway, M.D., is the Deputy Administrator for Innovation and Quality and CMS Chief Medical Officer. He leads the Center for Clinical Standards and Quality (CCSQ) and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) at CMS.  Previously, he was Director of Hospital Medicine and an Associate Professor at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. He was also AVP Outcomes Performance, responsible for leading measurement, including the electronic health record measures, and facilitating improvement of health outcomes across the health care system. Other relevant experience includes previous work as the Chief Medical Officer at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation. In 2007-08, he was a White House Fellow assigned to the Office of Secretary in HHS and the Director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Conway also served as Executive Director of the Federal Coordinating Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research coordinating the investment of the $1.1 billion for CER in the Recovery Act. He was a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar and completed a Master’s of Science focused on health services research and clinical epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Previously, he was a management consultant at McKinsey & Company, serving senior management of mainly health care clients on strategy projects. Conway completed pediatrics residency at Harvard Medical School’s Children’s Hospital Boston, graduated with High Honors from Baylor College of Medicine, and graduated summa cum laude from Texas A&M University.

​​​Karen Davis is currently the Eugene and Mildred Lipitz Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management and Director of the Roger C. Lipitz Center for Integrated Health Care at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. The center strives to discover and disseminate practical, cost-effective approaches to providing comprehensive, coordinated, and compassionate health care to chronically ill people and their families. Davis has served as President of The Commonwealth Fund, Chairman of the Department of Health Policy and Management at The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health Policy in the Department of Health and Human Services. Davis also serves on the Board of Directors of the Geisinger Health System and Geisinger Health Plan and on the Board of Trustees of ProMedica Health System in Ohio. She is a member of the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured. She was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 1975, has served two terms on the IOM governing Council (1986-90 and 1997-2000), and is a member of the IOM Committee on Geographic Variation in Health Care Spending. She is also a former member of the Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research (AHRQ) National Advisory Council for Health Care Policy, Research and Evaluation, of the Panel of Health Advisers for the Congressional Budget Office, and a past chairman of AcademyHealth. Davis has been a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance since 1990.

​​​Suzanne Delbanco is the executive director of Catalyst for Payment Reform. CPR is a non-profit organization working for coordinated action among the largest purchasers of health care and health plans to reform the way we pay for health care in the U.S. to improve quality and cost. In addition to her duties at CPR, Suzanne serves on the Coordinating Committee of the Measures Application Partnership for HHS, HFMA’s Healthcare Leadership Council, and the National Commission on Physician Payment Reform, the Health Care Incentives Improvement Institute board, and participates in the Healthcare Executives Leadership Network.  Previously, Delbanco was the founding CEO of The Leapfrog Group.  Suzanne holds a Ph.D. in Public Policy from the Goldman School of Public Policy and a M.P.H. from the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley.

​​​Susan Dentzer is Senior Policy Adviser at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation where she works closely with foundation leaders to carry out the organizational mission of improving the health and health care of all Americans. One of the nation’s most respected health and health policy thought leaders and journalists, she is also an on-air analyst on health issues on the PBS NewsHour. From 2008 to April 2013, she was the editor-in-chief of Health Affairs, the nation’s leading peer-reviewed journal of health policy. From 1998 to 2008, she led the PBS NewsHour’s health unit as on-air health correspondent, and was the recipient of numerous honors and awards. Dentzer is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine and the Council on Foreign Relations. Ms. Dentzer graduated from Dartmouth, is a trustee emerita of the college, and chaired the Dartmouth Board of Trustees from 2001 to 2004. She currently serves as a member of the Board of Overseers of Dartmouth Medical School and is an Overseer of the International Rescue Committee, a leading humanitarian organization. She is also on the board of directors of Research!America, an alliance working to make research to improve health a higher priority, and is a public member of the Board of Directors of the American Board of Medical Specialties. A widely admired communicator, Dentzer is a frequent speaker before a wide variety of health care and other groups, and a frequent commentator on such National Public Radio shows as the Diane Rehm Show and This American Life. Dentzer has been a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance since 2009.

​​​Sherry Glied became Dean of New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service in August 2013. From 1989-2013, she was Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. She was Chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management from 1998-2009. On June 22, 2010, Glied was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at the Department of Health and Human Services, and served in that capacity from July 2010 through August 2012. She had previously served as Senior Economist for health care and labor market policy on the President’s Council of Economic Advisers in 1992-1993, under Presidents Bush and Clinton, and participated in the Clinton Health Care Task Force. She has been elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Social Insurance, and the Board of AcademyHealth, and has been a member of the Congressional Budget Office’s Panel of Health Advisers. Glied’s principal areas of research are in health policy reform and mental health care policy. Her book on health care reform, Chronic Condition, was published by Harvard University Press in January 1998. Her book with Richard Frank, Better But Not Well: Mental Health Policy in the U.S. since 1950, was published by The Johns Hopkins University Press in 2006. She is co-editor, with Peter C. Smith, of The Oxford Handbook of Health Economics, which was published by the Oxford University Press in 2011. Glied holds a B.A. in economics from Yale University, an M.A. in economics from the University of Toronto, and a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University. Glied is a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance.

​​​Michael Gusmano joined The Hastings Center as a Research Scholar in January 2010.  He also holds adjunct appointments at Columbia and Yale universities. Gusmano has published widely in the areas of health policy, aging, and comparative welfare state analysis – including his book with Colleen Grogan, Healthy Voices/Unhealthy Silence: Advocating for Poor People’s Health (Georgetown University Press, 2007). He is the Co-Director of the World Cities Project (WCP) – the first effort to compare the performance of health, social and long -term care systems in New York, London, Paris and Tokyo – the four largest cities among the wealthy nations of the world. He holds a Ph.D in political science from the University of Maryland at College Park and a Masters in public policy from the State University of New York at Albany. He was also post-doctoral fellow in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholars in Health Policy program at Yale University. He is a member of the Gerontological Society of American and the American Political Science Association (APSA) and serves as the secretary of APSA’s Organized Section on Health Politics and Policy. He is also a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, and is a frequent reviewer for many journals in the field of health policy and politics.

​​​Stuart Guterman is vice president for Medicare and Cost Control at The Commonwealth Fund. He leads the Fund’s special initiative on Advancing Medicare, as well as staffs the Fund’s special initiative on Controlling Health Costs, which focuses on identifying and addressing the drivers of health care spending, as well as several other Fund programs. Guterman was executive director of The Commonwealth Fund’s Commission on a High Performance Health System from 2011 to 2013, and previously directed the Fund’s Program on Payment and System Reform and its Program on Medicare’s Future. Before coming to the Fund in 2005, he directed the Office of Research, Development, and Information at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Prior to that, he was a senior analyst at the Congressional Budget Office, a principal research associate in the health policy center at the Urban Institute, and deputy director of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (and its predecessor, the Prospective Payment Assessment Commission) from 1988 through 1999. Previously, Guterman was chief of institutional studies in the Health Care Financing Administration’s Office of Research, where he directed the evaluation of the Medicare Prospective Payment System for inpatient hospital services and other intramural and extramural research on hospital payment. He holds an A.B. in Economics from Rutgers College and an M.A. in Economics from Brown University, and did further work toward the Ph.D. in Economics at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Guterman has been a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance since 2005.

Julian Harris, M.D.  (invited) is Associate Director, Health Programs, at the Office of Management and Budget. Prior to that he was the Director of the Office of Medicaid in Massachusetts, a position in which he  oversees the state’s $11 billion Medicaid program that provides comprehensive health insurance for children, families, seniors, and people with disabilities.  From 2008 to 2011, Dr. Harris trained in internal medicine and primary care at the Brigham & Women’s Hospital while serving as a clinical fellow on the faculty of Harvard Medical School.  Concurrently, he practiced as a hospitalist physician with the Cambridge Health Alliance.  In 2006 and 2007, he worked as a consultant, first at the AIDS Support Organization in Uganda and later at BioAdvance Life Sciences Fund and McKinsey & Company.  Previously, he worked at the World Bank as a consultant for Global Core Courses on Reproductive Health and Health Sector Reform.  Dr. Harris is a Truman and Rhodes Scholar.  He received a B.A. from Duke University, a M.Sc. from Oxford University, an M.B.A. from the Wharton School of Business, and an M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.

​​​Richard Hodes, M.D. is the Director of the National Institute on Aging (NIA) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The NIA is the principal Federal funding agency for studies of the basic, clinical, epidemiological, and social aspects of aging. Hodes was named Director of the NIA in 1993. Hodes maintains an active involvement in research on the NIH campus in Bethesda, Maryland, through his direction of the Immune Regulation Section of the National Cancer Institute, a laboratory devoted to studying regulation of the immune system, focused on cellular and molecular events that activate the immune response. This involvement in campus research also serves to strengthen ties with other NIH scientists involved in studies of age-related diseases. Hodes received his B.A. from Yale University in 1965 and his M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1971. He is a Diplomate of the American Board of Internal Medicine. In 1995, Hodes was elected as a member of The Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives; in 1997, he was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; and, in 1999, he was elected to membership in the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. As author of more than 250 research papers, he is an influential scientist in and contributor to the field of immunology.

​​​Douglas Holtz-Eakin has a distinguished record as an academic, policy adviser, and strategist. Currently he is the President of the American Action Forum and most recently was a Commissioner on the Congressionally-chartered Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. Since 2001, he has served in a variety of important policy positions. During the 2008 Presidential Campaign, he served as John McCain’s Policy Director. Prior to these positions, Holtz-Eakin served as a Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, where he worked on issues of globalization and healthcare policy. From 2003 to 2005, he served as the Director of the Congressional Budget Office. A former senior staff economist for George H.W.Bush and a Senior Economic Advisor for George W. Bush, Holtz-Eakin is the recipient of the 2006 Morris and Edna Zale Award for Outstanding Achievement in Policy Research and Public Service. In addition to his public service, he has held several appointments at Columbia University, Princeton University and Syracuse University. Holtz-Eakin holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University. He has been a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance since 2008.

​​​Sachin Jain is Chief Medical Information and Innovation Officer (CMIO) at Merck and Lecturer in Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School. He also serves as an attending hospitalist physician at the Boston VA-Boston Medical Center. Previously, he was Senior Advisor to the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). At CMS, he helped lead the launch of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, briefly serving as its Acting Deputy Director for Policy and Programs. Jain also served as Special Assistant to the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC). At the ONC, Jain worked with David Blumenthal to implement the HITECH Provisions of the Recovery Act that provide incentives for physicians and hospitals to become meaningful users of health information technology. Jain has worked previously at WellPoint, McKinsey & Co, and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. He has also served as an expert consultant to the World Health Organization. Jain received his undergraduate degree magna cum laude in government from Harvard College; his medical degree from Harvard Medical School; and his master’s degree in business administration from the Harvard Business School. He was a recipient of the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship and the Dean’s Award at Harvard Business School. Jain completed his residency in internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where he was honored with the Resident Mentor Award. Jain has been a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance since 2010.

Renée Landers is Professor at Suffolk University Law School and current president of the Boston Bar Association. She is the first woman of color and the first law professor to serve as president of the bar association. She currently teaches health law, constitutional law and administrative law. Before joining the Suffolk University Law School faculty in 2002, Landers served as counsel in the health law group at the Boston law firm of Ropes & Gray for five years. Prior to that, she served as deputy general counsel for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. From 1993 until 1996, she was Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Policy Development at the U.S. Department of Justice. Before entering government service, Landers taught at Boston College Law School.  Landers was a member of NASI’s study panel on Strengthening Medicare’s Role in Reducing Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities and co-chaired the 21st NASI Conference on ”Social Insurance, Fiscal Responsibility, and Economic Growth.” A member of the National Academy of Social Insurance since 2008, Ms. Landers received her J.D. from Boston College Law School.

​​​Thomas Lee, M.D. joined Press Ganey as Chief Medical Officer in 2013, bringing more than three decades of experience in health care performance improvement as a practicing physician, a leader in provider organizations, researcher and health policy expert. In addition to his role with Press Ganey, Lee, an internist and cardiologist, continues to practice primary care at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Lee is a member of the Board of Directors of Geisinger Health System, the Special Medical Advisory Committee (SMAC) of the Veterans Administration and the Panel of Health Advisors of the Congressional Budget Office, and a member of the Editorial Board of The New England Journal of Medicine. Lee is a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Professor of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health, currently on leave from both positions. Prior to joining Press Ganey, he served as Network President for Partners Healthcare System and CEO for Partners Community HealthCare, Inc., the integrated delivery system founded by Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital. Lee holds a bachelor’s degree in history and science from Harvard College, a medical degree from Cornell University Medical College and a master’s degree in epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health.

​​​Marilyn Moon is an Institute Fellow and director of AIR’s Center on Aging. Her current work focuses on the role of informing consumers, providers and policy makers about aging and health care issues, issues in delivery system innovations, and approaches to Medicare and Social Security reform. A nationally-known economist and expert on Medicare, aging, consumer health issues, and health care financing, Moon has also served as a senior fellow at the Urban Institute and as a public trustee for the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. She has written extensively on health policy, reform issues in Medicare health financing, and other social insurance issues. In the 1990’s, she wrote a column for the Washington Post on health reform. Between 2003 and 2013 she directed AIR’s Health Program. She has been an associate professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, a senior analyst at the Congressional Budget Office, and the founding director of the Public Policy Institute of the American Association of Retired Persons. Moon’s earlier work focused on health care financing and public policy issues with a particular emphasis on Medicare costs and its impact on access to care. From 2008 through 2012, she chaired the Maryland Health Care Commission. She has served on a number of boards for non-profit organizations, including the Medicare Rights Center and the National Academy of Social Insurance. She is a member of the Institute of Medicine. Moon is a founding member of the National Academy of Social Insurance and the 2014 recipient of the Robert M. Ball Award.

​​​Lauren Nicholas is a health economist whose research focuses on the role of public policy in improving healthcare quality, health, and retirement outcomes for the elderly population. She is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Health Policy & Management and Surgery at the Johns Hopkins University and a faculty associate of the University of Michigan Survey Research Center. She has received several awards for her research including the NASI John Heinz Dissertation Award and the AcademyHealth Article of the Year Award. Nicholas received her Ph.D. in Social Policy and analysis from Columbia University. Her current research aims to understand the effects of health care utilization on health and economic outcomes through linked survey and administrative data. Ongoing projects evaluate efforts to improve the quality and efficiency of care provided to Medicare beneficiaries. Areas of interest include pay-for-performance incentives, managed care, public reporting, geographic variation in service use, and end-of-life care. Nicholas has received research grants from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the National Institute on Aging, the Social Security Administration, the USDA Research Innovation and Development Grants in Economics Program, the Commonwealth Fund and the John A. Hartford Foundation. Nicholas has been a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance since 2012.

​​​Jennifer Ortman is chief of the Population Projections Branch in the Population Division. She oversees the research and development of the Census Bureau’s population projections. She has presented her work at numerous academic conferences and professional meetings and recently gave presentations on the approaches for projecting fertility and mortality that will be used in the 2014 National Projections. In 2011, Ortman received two Bronze Medal Awards for her work on demographic estimates used to evaluate the 2010 Census and intercensal estimates, a consistent time series of population estimates between the 2000 and 2010 censuses. Ortman received her doctorate in sociology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with a focus on language use across immigrant generations. She also received a master’s in sociology and a bachelor’s in anthropology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

​​​Uwe Reinhardt, Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University, is recognized as one of the nation’s leading authorities on health care economics and has been a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences since 1978. He is a past president of the Association of Health Services Research. From 1986 to 1995 he served as a commissioner on the Physician Payment Review Committee, established in 1986 by Congress to advise it on issues related to the payment of physicians. He is a senior associate of the Judge Institute for Management of Cambridge University, UK, and a trustee of Duke University, and the Duke University Health System. Reinhardt is or was a member of numerous editorial boards, among them the Journal of Health Economics, the Milbank Memorial Quarterly, Health Affairs, the New England Journal of Medicine, and the Journal of the American Medical Association. Reinhardt is a founding member of the the National Academy of Social Insurance.

Julie Rovner is the Robin Toner Distinguished Fellow at Kaiser Health News (KHN). Rovner joined KHN after 16 years as health policy correspondent for NPR, where she helped lead the network’s coverage of the passage and implementation of the Affordable Care Act. A noted expert on health policy issues, Rovner is the author of a critically-praised reference book Health Care Politics and Policy A-Z, now in its third edition. In 2005, she was awarded the National Press Foundation’s Everett McKinley Dirksen Award for distinguished reporting of Congress for her coverage of the passage of the Medicare prescription drug law and its aftermath. Prior to NPR, Rovner covered health policy for National Journal’s CongressDaily and for Congressional Quarterly, among others. She has a degree in political science from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor.

​​​Lewis Sandy, M.D., is Senior Vice President, Clinical Advancement, UnitedHealth Group. At UnitedHealth Group, a diversified health and well-being company, he leads efforts to promote efficient and effective health care, provide tools and information to doctors and patients to promote health, and foster the growth of evidence-based medicine. From 2003 to 2007, he was Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer of UnitedHealthcare, UnitedHealth Group’s largest business focusing on the commercial health benefits market. From 1997 to 2003, he was Executive Vice President of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the nation’s largest health-focused private foundation. Prior to this, Sandy was a program vice president of the Foundation, and an active grantmaker in the Foundation’s workforce, health policy, and chronic care initiatives. An internist and former health center medical director at the Harvard Community Health Plan in Boston, Massachusetts, Sandy received his B.S. and M.D. degrees from the University of Michigan and an M.B.A. degree from Stanford University.  A former Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar and Clinical Fellow in Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, Sandy served his internship and residency at the Beth Israel Hospital in Boston.  He is currently a Senior Fellow of the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, Department of Health Policy and Management.

Leonard D. Schaeffer was founding Chairman and CEO of WellPoint from 1992 through 2004. He continued to serve as Chairman through 2005. Mr. Schaeffer joined WellPoint’s predecessor company, Blue Cross of California, as President and CEO, in 1986. He is currently a senior advisor to TPG Capital and is the Judge Robert Maclay Widney Chair and Professor at the University of Southern California (USC). In the federal government, he served as Administrator of the Health Care Financing Administration (now CMS). Mr. Schaeffer is a member of the Board of Directors of Quintiles Transnational Corp. He also serves on the Board of Trustees of the RAND Corporation, the Brookings Institution, USC, and the Board of Fellows at Harvard Medical School. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine. Schaeffer established the Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics at USC and chairs its advisory board. He has endowed academic chairs in health policy and economics at the Brookings Institution, the University of California at Berkeley, IOM, and Harvard Medical School. He received the USC Sol Price Award for his achievements as a business leader, policy expert and philanthropist. He was the Regent’s Lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley and a Gilbert fellow at Princeton.  Schaeffer is a founding member of the National Academy of Social Insurance. He received his A.B. in economics from Princeton University.

​​​Thomas Scully is Senior Counsel at Alston & Bird LLP and a general partner with Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe. His focus includes health care regulatory and legislative matters. Prior to joining the two law firms, Scully was appointed by President George W. Bush as Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. At CMS, Mr. Scully had an instrumental role in designing and passing Medicare reform and Medicare Part D legislation and in making the vast agency more open and accountable to the public. He initiated the first public reporting and disclosure for comparative quality among hospitals, nursing homes, home health agencies and dialysis centers. Before joining CMS, Tom served as president and CEO of the Federation of American Hospitals from 1995 to 2001. Mr. Scully served on the Academy’s Study Panel on Fee-For-Service Medicare.  A member of the National Academy of Social Insurance since 2001, he received his law degree from Catholic University.

​​​Bruce Vladeck is a Senior Advisor at leading healthcare consulting firm Nexera, Inc. Vladeck is perhaps most widely known for his tenure as Administrator of the Healthcare Financing Administration (HCFA) from 1993 to 1997. His work at HCFA was recognized in 1995 by a National Public Service Award. He remained closely involved in Medicare policy from 1998 to 1999 as a Presidential Appointee to the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare. Vladeck served as President of the United Hospital Fund for 10 years. He has also held full-time faculty positions at Columbia University and Mount Sinai, and has served as adjunct faculty at Rutgers, Princeton, New York University, and the Aquinas Institute of Theology. He is currently a member of the Institute of Medicine and the New York Academy of Medicine, and serves on the Board of the Medicare Rights Center, the March of Dimes, and the New York City Board of Health. He is a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan. Vladeck is a founding member of the National Academy of Social Insurance and the 2005 recipient of the Robert M. Ball Award.

​​​Gail Wilensky is John M. Olin Senior Fellow at Project HOPE, where she analyzes and develops policies relating to health care reform and changes in the medical marketplace. She testifies frequently before Congressional committees, advises members of Congress and other elected officials, and speaks nationally and internationally before professional, business and consumer groups. She co-chaired a Presidential Task Force on improving the health care of veterans and military retirees. From 1997 to 2001, she chaired the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission. From 1995 to 1997, she chaired the Physician Payment Review Commission. Previously, she served as Deputy Assistant to President George Bush for Policy Development, advising him on health and welfare issues. Prior to that, she was Administrator of the Health Care Financing Administration, overseeing the Medicare and Medicaid programs. Wilensky is a member of the Institute of Medicine and its Governing Council. She is an advisor to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Commonwealth Fund and is a director on several corporate boards. She served on the Academy’s Restructuring Medicare for the Long Term Steering Committee. She received her Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan. Wilensky has been a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance since 1993.