Speakers (in alphabetical order)
Joseph R. Antos is the Wilson H. Taylor Scholar in Health Care and Retirement Policy at the American Enterprise Institute and adjunct associate professor of emergency medicine at The George Washington University. He is also serving a third term as a commissioner on the Maryland Health Services Cost Review Commission. Previously, Antos was Assistant Director for Health and Human Resources at the Congressional Budget Office, and he held senior management positions in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Office of Management and Budget, and the President’s Council of Economic Advisers. His work focuses on the economics of health policy, including the Affordable Care Act, Medicare, the uninsured, and the overall reform of the health care system. Antos earned his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Rochester. He has been a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance since 2002.
Kenneth S. Apfel is a professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy. He also currently serves on the Maryland Health Exchange Board, implementing the Affordable Care Act in Maryland. Prior to his academic appointments, Apfel served in several executive positions in government – as the Commissioner of the Social Security Administration, as the Associate Director for Human Resource Programs at the Office of Management and Budget in the Executive Office of the President, and as the Assistant Secretary for Management and Budget at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. He also served as the Chair of the Board at the National Academy of Social Insurance and The National Academy of Public Administration. He spent 2014 as a Fulbright Scholar in Delhi, examining India’s health insurance and public pension policies. He has been a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance since 1998.
Alexandra L. Bradley is Health Policy Analyst at the National Academy of Social Insurance. She conducts research and policy analysis on health-related issues such as Medicaid, Medicare, paid family leave, long-term care, and health care reform. Prior to joining the Academy, Bradley worked with the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (RAINN) as a manager on two crisis hotline teams – one serving the military community, and the other serving the general public at large. Prior to that, Bradley worked as a research assistant studying families, parenting, and child development for the Child and Family Research Section of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). Bradley holds a Master of Public Health degree, with a concentration in maternal and child health, from The George Washington University, where she was inducted into the honorary society for public health, Delta Omega. She also holds Bachelor’s degrees in psychology (magna cum laude) and government from Cornell University.
Ngina Chiteji is an Associate Professor at New York University (NYU). Her teaching and research interests lie in the areas of public policy, macroeconomics, economic inequality, intergenerational connections, the distribution of household wealth, and retirement savings in the United States. Chiteji’s background includes time spent as a Research Analyst at the Congressional Budget office (CBO), a visiting scholar at the Democracy Collaborative at the University of Maryland, and a fellow at the Poverty Research and Training Program at the University of Michigan. She is also a former chair of the American Economic Association’s Committee on the Status of Minority Groups in the Economics Profession. She holds a B.A. from Brown University and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. She has been a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance since 2011.
Henry Claypool is Policy Director of the Community Living Policy Center at the University of California, San Francisco. He is the former Director of the Health and Human Services Office on Disability and a founding Principal Deputy Administrator of the Administration for Community Living. He also served as a presidentially-appointed member of the Federal Commission on Long-Term Care, advising Congress on how long-term care can be better provided and financed for the nation’s older adults and people with disabilities both now and in the future, and was Executive Vice President of the American Association of People with Disabilities, which promotes equal opportunity, economic power, independent living, and political participation for people with disabilities. He is Affiliated Faculty at the Institute for Health & Aging at UCSF and principal of Claypool Consulting. He has been a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance since 2006.
Judy Feder is a professor of public policy and, from 1999 to 2008, served as dean of what is now the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University. A widely published scholar, Feder’s health policy research began at the Brookings Institution, continued at the Urban Institute, and, since 1984, flourished at Georgetown University. In the late 1980s, Feder moved from policy research to policy leadership, actively promoting effective health reform as staff director of the congressional Pepper Commission (chaired by Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV) in 1989-90; Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at the Department of Health and Human Services in former President Bill Clinton’s first term; a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress (2008-2011); and, today, as an Institute Fellow at the Urban Institute. Feder is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Public Administration, and the National Academy of Social Insurance; a former chair and board member of AcademyHealth; a member of the Center for American Progress Action Fund Board, the Board of the National Academy of Social Insurance, and the Hamilton Project’s Advisory Council; and a senior advisor to the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured. In 2006 and 2008, Feder was the Democratic nominee for Congress in Virginia’s 10th congressional district. Feder is a political scientist, with a B.A. from Brandeis University, and a Master’s degree and Ph.D. from Harvard University. She is a founding member of the National Academy of Social Insurance.
Yevgeniy Feyman is a senior research assistant in the department of health policy and management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He writes on health care policy, entitlement reform, and the Affordable Care Act. His past research has focused on a variety of topics, including the physician shortage, the cost of health care reform, and consumer-directed health care. Feyman was previously the deputy director of health policy at the Manhattan Institute. In 2013, Feyman – along with colleagues Avik Roy and Paul Howard – released the Obamacare Impact Map, a state-by-state look at the effects of the ACA. His current research focuses on dynamics of the Medicare Advantage program and hospital consolidation. Feyman has written for various publications, including Boston Globe’s Stat, The Hill, Washington Examiner, Health Affairs, US News and World Report, Bloomberg View, and Politico. He has spoken on numerous radio and TV shows and is a contributor to The Apothecary, the Forbes health care blog on health care policy and entitlement reform. Feyman holds a B.A. in economics and political science from Hunter College of the City University.
Jason J. Fichtner is a Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. His research focuses on Social Security, federal tax policy, federal budget policy, retirement security, and policy proposals to increase saving and investment. Previously, he served in several positions at the Social Security Administration, including as Deputy Commissioner of Social Security (acting), chief economist, and associate commissioner for retirement policy. He also served as senior economist with the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress. He also serves as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy, the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and the Virginia Tech Center for Public Administration and Policy, where he teaches courses in economics, public finance, public policy process, public management, and public budgeting processes. Fichtner earned his B.A. from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; his M.P.P. from Georgetown University; and his Ph.D. in public administration and policy from Virginia Tech. Fichtner is the author of The Hidden Cost of Federal Tax Policy and the editor of The Economics of Medicaid.
Elaine Fultz holds a Ph.D. in public administration from New York University. She served as a professional staff member at the House Ways and Means Committee, Subcommittee on Social Security, and worked for the International Labor Organization, where she provided technical support for the establishment and reform of social insurance systems in Southern Africa and Central Europe. In the latter duty station, she managed a regional research project that documented the results of various social insurance reform strategies, including partial privatization of national pension systems. Subsequently, she served as the director of the ILO regional office for Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia. Now retired from the ILO, she works as a researcher and consultant and teaches at Temple University school of continuing education. She has been a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance since 1993.
Peter Georgescu, Author and Chairman Emeritus, Young and Rubicam, Inc.
Brett Graham is chief strategy officer with Leavitt Partners, where he is responsible for forging new relationships and developing the firm’s key external alliances. Prior to joining Leavitt Partners, Graham led the operations and played a key role in the sale of a regional administrator of self-funded benefit plans to Meritain Health. Following the transaction, he led the post-merger integration and was a member of Meritain’s strategy team. Before his time at Meritain Health, he worked as a vice president at UnitedHealth Group within the Ingenix business unit. Graham joined the business development and strategic planning team, and was responsible for conducting analysis on acquisitions and strategic partnerships during a period of hyper-growth. Graham moved to operations and was the business leader for Ingenix’s pricing databases, where he was responsible for working with large payers to aggregate and analyze claims data. In a previous role, Graham served as a management consultant with the Boston Consulting Group, where he worked with senior business leaders to develop growth strategies for Fortune 100 clients. Graham holds a Master’s degree in business administration from the Harvard Business School, as well as a Master of Public Administration degree and a Bachelor’s degree in accounting from the University of Utah.
Lawrence R. Jacobs is the Mondale Chair and Director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance in the Hubert H. Humphrey School and Department of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. He has written or edited 16 books as well as authoring numerous articles on health policy, public opinion and elections, the U.S. presidency, and American political development. His book with Theda Skocpol, Health Care Reform and American Politics, is in its third edition with Oxford University Press. His latest books are Who Governs? Presidents, Public Opinion, and Manipulation with James Druckman (University of Chicago Press, 2015) and Fed Power: How Finance Wins with Desmond King (Oxford University Press, 2016). He has been a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance since 1996.
Josephine Kalipeni is Director of Policy and Partnerships at Caring Across Generations. She has worked with many organizations, including the NAACP, Illinois Black Chamber of Commerce, and Progressive Action for the Common Good. Her expertise includes grassroots and faith organizing, consumer engagement, and equity policy in health, education, and international affairs. She received a Bachelor of Arts in sociology with a concentration in political science and religious studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and her Master’s in social justice and community development, with an expertise in global policy, from Loyola University in Chicago. She initially worked in family crisis case management and social work, experiencing the hardships of families navigating broken systems. This lead her to advocacy and policy development work. Kalipeni has worked providing technical and policy assistance to state organizations working on progressive policy; researching and developing local, state, and national policy; and advising on issue-based and electoral campaigns.
Joy A. Lewis currently serves as Senior Health Policy Leader with the Kaiser Permanente Institute for Health Policy. As the first Institute staff member based in Washington, D.C., Lewis monitors and analyzes key health policy issues, and communicates relevant information and perspective to Kaiser Permanente’s corporate headquarters in California. She organizes and leads Institute events, such as policy discussions and roundtables; writes blogs, white papers, and issue briefs; and speaks on health policy and public policy issues to a wide array of internal and external audiences. Her current work portfolio includes Medicaid, Drug Pricing, Telemedicine, Mental Health and Wellness, and Innovations in Care Delivery. Lewis also serves as a liaison to a variety of Kaiser Permanente partners in Washington, D.C., and has served on a non-profit board, several planning committees, and will begin a three-year term on the advisory committee for Academy Health’s Translation and Dissemination Institute, effective January 2017. Lewis holds dual Master’s degrees in social work and public health. She earned a Bachelor’s of Arts degree in psychology and sociology from Wesleyan University.
Theodore R. Marmor is Professor Emeritus in three units of Yale University: the School of Management, the School of Law, and the Department of Political Science. From 1992 to 2003, he was the Director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s post-doctoral program in health policy, and in 2001, the Foundation awarded him an Investigator Award in Health Policy. Marmor has taught at the Universities of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Chicago, and at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. The author (or co-author) of eleven books, he has published over 200 articles in a wide range of scholarly journals. Marmor began his public career as a special assistant to Wilbur Cohen (Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare) in the mid-1960s. He was a member of President Carter’s Commission on the 1980s Agenda, and a senior social policy advisor to Walter Mondale in the Presidential campaign of 1984. Marmor is a fellow of the Institute of Medicine and the British Academy. He is a founding member of the National Academy of Social Insurance.
Aparna Mathur is a resident scholar in economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. At AEI, her research has focused on income inequality and mobility, tax policy, labor markets, and small businesses. She has published in several top scholarly journals, testified several times before Congress, and published numerous articles in the popular press on issues of policy relevance. Her work has been cited in academic journals as well as in leading news magazines such as The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and Businessweek. Government organizations such as the Congressional Research Service and the Congressional Budget Office have also cited her work in their reports to Congress. She has been an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s School of Public Policy and has taught economics at the University of Maryland. She received her Ph.D. in economics from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2005.
Marilyn Moon is an Institute Fellow at the American Institutes for Research (AIR) and Director of the Center on Aging. She writes about Medicare reform, consumer engagement, and issues facing an aging society. She is an expert on health care financing and delivery and specializes in policy analysis and translation of complex findings into materials useful to policymakers and consumers. From 2003 to 2013, she directed the Health Program at AIR. 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, a senior analyst at the Congressional Budget Office, and an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. From 2008 through 2012, she chaired the Maryland Health Care Commission, and she was a public trustee for the Social Security and Medicare trust funds from 1995 to 2000. She has served on a number of boards for non-profit organizations, including the Medicare Rights Center and the National Academy of Social Insurance, and is a member of the National Academy of Medicine. Moon earned a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. In 2014, she received the Robert M. Ball award for outstanding achievements in social insurance from the National Academy of Social Insurance, of which she is a founding member.
Len Nichols has been the Director of the Center for Health Policy Research and Ethics (CHPRE) and a Professor of Health Policy at George Mason University since 2010, where he continues to bridge the worlds of health policy, health politics, health economics, health services research, and helping to interpret it all for policy makers, private sector leaders, and journalists. Nichols is the principal investigator of a five-year evaluation study of the CareFirst Patient Centered Medical Home program. He has testified frequently before Congress and state legislatures, and is or has been an advisor to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, the Patient Centered Primary Care Collaborative, and to the Pan American Health Organization. Nichols has worked with the Commonwealth’s official Health Reform Initiative and the new Virginia Center for Health Innovation, as well as with Fairfax County on its own health reform implementation options. Past positions include Senior Advisor for Health Policy at the Office of Management and Budget, Vice President of the Center for Studying Health System Change, Principal Research Associate at the Urban Institute, and chair of the Department of Economics at Wellesley College. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois. He has been a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance since 1999.
Trish Riley is Executive Director of the National Academy for State Health Policy (NASHP) and president of its corporate Board. She helped build NASHP as CEO from 1988-2003. Previously, she was a Senior Fellow at the Muskie School of Public Service, University of Southern Maine, and a Lecturer in State Health Policy at The George Washington University. From 2003-2011, she served as Director of Governor Baldacci’s Office of Health Policy and Finance. She was the principal architect of Dirigo Health Reform and served as the state’s liaison to the federal government and Congress, particularly during deliberations around national health reform. She chaired the Governor’s Steering Committee to develop a plan to implement the Affordable Care Act in Maine. Riley has also held appointive positions under five Maine governors – directing the aging office, Medicaid and state health agencies, and health planning and licensing programs. She serves as a member of the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, the Institute of Medicine’s Board on Health Care Services, the National Academy for Social Insurance – where she co-chairs the Study Panel on Medicaid and a Culture of Health – and the Board of Directors of Maine’s Co-Op insurance plan. She was a founding member of the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission (MACPAC), served on the Institute of Medicine’s Subcommittee on Creating an External Environment for Quality, and was a member of the Board of Directors of the National Committee on Quality Assurance. Riley holds a B.S. and M.S. from the University of Maine. She has been a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance since 1993.
James Roosevelt, Jr. joined Tufts Health Plan in 1999 as Senior Vice President and General Counsel, and held that position until June 2005, when he became President and Chief Executive Officer. Before joining Tufts Health Plan, Roosevelt was Associate Commissioner for Retirement Policy for the Social Security Administration in Washington, D.C. He spent 10 years as partner at Choate, Hall, and Stewart in Boston. He is past chairman of the board of trustees for the Massachusetts Hospital Association, past president of the American Health Lawyers Association, a former member of the board of the trustees for the American Hospital Association, and past chairman of the board of trustees for Mount Auburn Hospital. Currently, Roosevelt serves as a member of the board of directors of Alere, Inc, where he chairs the Compensation Committee and is a member of its Nominating and Governance Committees. He is a board member and chair of the policy committee of America’s Health Insurance Plans. He is also a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Politics of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and is co-chair of the board of directors for the Tufts Health Care Institute. He is a member of the executive committee and co-chairs the Rules and By-laws Committee of the Democratic National Committee, defining and overseeing the delegate selection process of the Democratic National Convention. He volunteers as chief legal counsel of the Massachusetts Democratic Party. In November 2008, President-elect Barack Obama appointed Roosevelt to his transition team to co-chair a review of the Social Security Administration. Roosevelt received his J.D. from Harvard Law School and his B.A. with honors in government from Harvard College. He has also completed the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School. He has been a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance since 2010.
Maya Rossin-Slater is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is also a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and a Research Affiliate at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). She received her Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University in 2013. Rossin-Slater’s research includes work in health, public, labor, and gender economics. She focuses on issues in maternal and child well-being, family structure and behavior, and policies targeting disadvantaged populations in the United States and other developed countries. She has published and has forthcoming articles in a variety of peer-reviewed journals, including the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, the Journal of Health Economics, and the Journal of Public Economics. She holds a Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University.
Avik Roy is the President of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity (FREOPP.org), a non-partisan, non-profit think tank that conducts original research on expanding opportunity to those who least have it. He has advised three presidential candidates on policy, including Marco Rubio, Rick Perry, and Mitt Romney. As the Senior Advisor to Perry’s campaign in 2015, Roy was also the lead author of Gov. Perry’s major policy speeches. The Wall Street Journal called Perry’s address on intergenerational black poverty “the speech of the campaign so far.” Roy also serves as the Opinion Editor at Forbes, where he writes on politics and policy and manages The Apothecary, the influential Forbes blog on health care policy and entitlement reform. Roy is the author of How Medicaid Fails the Poor, published by Encounter Books in 2013, and Transcending Obamacare: A Patient-Centered Plan for Near-Universal Coverage and Permanent Fiscal Solvency, a second edition of which was published in 2016 by FREOPP. He serves on the advisory board of the National Institute for Health Care Management, and co-chaired the Fixing Veterans Health Care Policy Taskforce. From 2011 to 2016, Roy served as a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, where he conducted research on the Affordable Care Act, entitlement reform, universal coverage, international health systems, and FDA policy. Previously, he served as an analyst and portfolio manager at Bain Capital, J.P. Morgan, and other firms. Roy was educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he studied molecular biology, and the Yale University School of Medicine.
Stephen W. Schondelmeyer is the Director of the PRIME Institute which focuses on economic and policy analysis related to the role of pharmaceuticals and pharmacists in society. He has a unique and extensive background which includes experience as a pharmacist, clinical practitioner, health services researcher, public policy analyst, administrator, and health and pharmaceutical economist. His research and policy work over the past 40 years has encompassed issues related to utilization and expenditures for pharmaceuticals in society including: generic drug product substitution, evaluation of therapeutic equivalence across drug products; identifying the impact of patent (and exclusivity) expiration and generic entry on the market; drug formulary design and management; drug coverage; pricing and competition patterns among pharmaceuticals; access and affordability of drug therapy; pharmacoeconomic assessments of drug products; outcome evaluation of medication therapy management services; and payment policy under Medicaid, Medicare, and private third party programs. Schondelmeyer is a consultant to the University of Minnesota UPlan health benefit program where he helps to sharpen the policies on coverage and payment for traditional medications, specialty and biologic products. His experience and research has included analysis of national and state laws, regulations, and policies related to FDA, state boards of pharmacy, and generic and therapeutic substitution involving FDA-approved therapeutically equivalent drug products. Schondelmeyer holds a B.S. in Pharmacy from the University of Missouri; a Pharm.D. and clinical pharmacy residency from the University of Kentucky; and a Master of Public Administration and a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Administration from Ohio State University. Schondelmeyer has been a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance since 2006.
Stephen A. Somers is the president and chief executive officer of the Center for Health Care Strategies (CHCS), which he founded in 1995. In that role, he has been responsible for the organization’s growth into a nationally recognized center on improving care for beneficiaries of this country’s publicly financed health care programs, particularly those with chronic illnesses and disabilities. CHCS receives support from multiple philanthropies, corporate community benefit programs, and federal and state governments. Before starting CHCS, Somers was an associate vice president and program officer at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Prior to that, he was a professional staff member at the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging and legislative assistant to U.S. Senator John Heinz of Pennsylvania. Somers is a visiting lecturer at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He earned his Ph.D. in the politics of education from Stanford University.
Paul N. Van de Water is a Senior Fellow and Director of Policy Futures at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, where he specializes in Medicare, Social Security, and health coverage issues. Previously, he was Vice President for Health Policy at the National Academy of Social Insurance. From 2001 to 2005 Van de Water served as Assistant Deputy Commissioner for Policy at the Social Security Administration, where he managed the agency’s policy analysis, research, and statistical activities. From 1999 to 2001, he was Associate Commissioner for Research, Evaluation, and Statistics at Social Security. Prior, Van de Water worked for over 18 years at the Congressional Budget Office. From 1994 to 1999 he was Assistant Director for Budget Analysis. In that capacity he supervised the agency’s budget projections, analyses of the President’s budget, cost estimates of legislative proposals, and estimates of the cost of federal mandates on state and local governments. Van de Water holds an A.B. with highest honors in economics from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a founding member of the National Academy of Social Insurance.
Benjamin W. Veghte is Vice President for Policy at the National Academy of Social Insurance. In this role, Veghte leads the Academy’s research and policy initiatives. He brings more than two decades of social insurance experience in diverse institutional environments in the United States and Germany. His research, teaching, and policy work have been devoted to advancing our understanding of the role of social insurance in thriving economies and democratic societies. Before leading the Academy’s policy work, Veghte was Research Director at Social Security Works. Prior to that, he was the Founding Executive Director of the Scholars Strategy Network at Harvard University, which seeks to improve public policy and strengthen democracy by connecting university scholars and their research to policymakers, associations, citizens, and the media. Previously, he was an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Bremen and co-founder of the Bremen Graduate School of Social Sciences, an innovative interdisciplinary Ph.D. program in Germany. He also served as a Social Protection Consultant to the European Commission on a project advising Eastern European succession states on social insurance policy. Veghte earned his Master of Public Administration degree from the Harvard Kennedy School and his Ph.D. in modern European history from the University of Chicago. He is a Truman Scholar, a Truman Governance Fellow, and has been a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance since 2013.
Leana Wen is Baltimore City’s Commissioner of Health – the oldest continuously-operating health department in the U.S. Founded in 1793, the Baltimore City Health Department employs 1,000 individuals committed to improving well-being and combating disparities. Facing an unprecedented number of people dying from opioid overdose, Wen issued a blanket prescription for the opioid antidote, naloxone, to all 620,000 residents of Baltimore. Since 2015, this program has saved over 530 lives. In March 2016, Wen was invited by the White House to speak on a panel with President Obama about Baltimore’s efforts to address addiction as a public health crisis. Wen is a board-certified emergency physician who received her medical training at Washington University School of Medicine and completed residency at Brigham & Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital. She was a Rhodes Scholar, a Clinical Fellow at Harvard, a consultant with the World Health Organization, and, until her appointment in Baltimore, a professor at The George Washington University. In 2016, Wen was honored to be the recipient of the American Public Health Association’s highest award for local public health work, the Milton and Ruth Roemer Award.