This conference took place March 4 – 5, 2020. Resources are available on the ‘Conference Materials’ tab below.
A recap of key conference takeaways is available here.
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Medicare is the nation’s largest publicly financed source of health insurance. This social insurance program provides coverage for approximately one out of every six people residing in the U.S., including 51 million individuals over the age of 65 and 9 million people under 65 with a disability or qualifying health condition.
Today’s health care reform debate, fueled by concerns about the remaining uninsured, persistent underinsurance and other gaps in coverage, rising health costs, and the concomitant affordability challenges, has led many to turn to Medicare for potential solutions. The Academy’s 32nd annual policy conference explored the implications of using Medicare as a coverage expansion platform for the overall health care system.
Who: This conference will be valuable for health care policy and social policy professionals. Health care administrators and clinical and health care delivery professionals would also benefit from participating.
Key Topics: Medicare, Medicare-for-All, Medicare buy-in, eligibility criteria, health insurance, health coverage, financing, inequality, disparities
Marilyn Moon, American Institutes for Research; Co-Chair, Academy Study Panel on Medicare Eligibility
Cori Uccello, American Academy of Actuaries; Co-Chair, Academy Study Panel on Medicare Eligibility
William Arnone, National Academy of Social Insurance; Project Director, Academy Study Panel on Medicare Eligibility
Elizabeth Docteur, Elizabeth Docteur Consulting; Co-Principal Investigator, Academy Study Panel on Medicare Eligibility
Renée Landers, Suffolk University Law School; Co-Principal Investigator, Academy Study Panel on Medicare Eligibility
The 2020 Conference follows the work of a new Academy Study Panel on Medicare Eligibility. Members of the Medicare Eligibility Study Panel will lead the conference program design committee. For more information, please contact Bill Arnone, Chief Executive Officer, at warnone@nasi.org.
Planning Committee
Marilyn Moon, American Institutes for Research; Co-Chair, Academy Study Panel on Medicare Eligibility
Cori Uccello, American Academy of Actuaries; Co-Chair, Academy Study Panel on Medicare Eligibility
William Arnone, National Academy of Social Insurance; Project Director, Academy Study Panel on Medicare Eligibility
Elizabeth Docteur, Elizabeth Docteur Consulting; Co-Principal Investigator, Academy Study Panel on Medicare Eligibility
Renée Landers, Suffolk University Law School; Co-Principal Investigator, Academy Study Panel on Medicare Eligibility
The 2020 Conference follows the work of a new Academy Study Panel on Medicare Eligibility. Members of the Medicare Eligibility Study Panel will lead the conference program design committee. For more information, please contact Bill Arnone, Chief Executive Officer, at warnone@nasi.org.
Wednesday, March 4, 2020
3:00 PM Registration Opens3:30 PM Opening Panel: Health Care and the 2020 Elections
Health care is a top issue for voters heading into the 2020 presidential election, as it was in the 2018 midterm elections. This panel provided an overview of the current presidential and legislative proposals and take stock of the political state of health care reform.
- Moderator: Katie Keith, Principal, Keith Policy Solutions, LLC
- Chris Jennings, Founder and President, Jennings Policy Strategies, Inc.
- Rodney Whitlock, Vice President, McDermott+Consulting
Thursday, March 5, 2020
8:00 AM Registration opens / Networking Breakfast9:00 AM Welcoming Remarks: William J. Arnone, Chief Executive Officer, National Academy of Social Insurance
9:05 AM Panel 1: The Current Health Care Reform Landscape
What are the drivers of today’s reform debate? Why is Medicare viewed as a potential platform for expanding coverage? This panel took stock of current policy issues, including the persistent problems of uninsurance and underinsurance, affordability challenges, health disparities and inequities, and the rising cost of health care in the United States. Panelists examined why Medicare has figured prominently in the ongoing reform debate, discussed potential Medicare eligibility expansion approaches, and assessed how these approaches might address various policy goals.
- Moderators: Cori Uccello, Senior Health Fellow, American Academy of Actuaries and Marilyn Moon, Retired, American Institutes for Research (AIR)
- Sara Collins, Vice President for Health Care Coverage and Access, The Commonwealth Fund
- Mark Miller, Executive Vice President of Health Care, Arnold Ventures
- Paul Starr, Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs, Princeton University
After several years of decline in the wake of ACA implementation, the share of the population that lacks health insurance is rising again. Concerns about this development as well as about disparities across population subgroups in those who are uninsured, and the continued pressure that the uninsured population presents for health care delivery and public health mechanisms underlie many aspects of the health reform debate. How might an expansion of Medicare affect coverage and affordability of coverage and care for individuals and families? What is the potential impact on different beneficiary populations and health equity as a whole? What is the potential impact on other sources of coverage? How might these effects differ under various Medicare expansion proposals?
- Moderator: Lauren LeRoy, Strategic Advisor, LLeRoy Strategies
- Maya Rockeymoore Cummings, Chairwoman, Maryland Democratic Party
- Gwendolyn Roberts Majette, Associate Professor of Law, Center for Health Law and Policy, Cleveland-Marshall College of Law
- Harold Pollack, Helen Ross Professor, School of Social Service Administration, University of Chicago
The very high cost of health care, in total and on a per capita basis, has served as a perennial motive for reform. These costs exert substantial pressure on federal and state budgets, raise costs for employers, and impose ever-increasing premiums and out-of-pocket costs for individuals and families. This panel discussed Medicare’s potential appeal as a platform to contain costs, through lower payment rates, payment innovations, increased administrative efficiency, and additional cost-containment strategies. What are the implications for health care spending of extending Medicare’s payment/cost-containment methods to a broader population? How might these implications differ for various Medicare expansion proposals?
- Moderator: Elizabeth Docteur, Principal, Elizabeth Docteur Consulting
- Gerard Anderson, Professor of Health Policy, Johns Hopkins University
- Bob Berenson, Institute Fellow, Urban Institute
- Zack Cooper, Associate Professor of Health Policy and of Economics, Director, Yale University
1:00 PM Luncheon Keynote: Elisabeth Rosenthal, Editor-in-Chief, Kaiser Health News (KHN) and author of An American Sickness: How Healthcare became Big Business and How You Can Take it Back
1:40 PM Move to breakout sessions
1:50 PM Breakout Panels: Key Design Implications for Select Approaches
Transitioning to Medicare for All: Impact on Consumers, Employers, Private Insurers, and Providers
Location: Murrow-White Room
- Moderator: Renée M. Landers, National Academy of Social Insurance Vice Chair, and Co-Principal Investigator, Academy Study Panel on Medicare Eligibility
- Peter Arno, Senior Fellow and Director of Health Policy Research, Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts Amherst
- Chip Kahn, Chief Executive Officer, Federation of American Hospitals
- Allyson Schwartz, President and Chief Executive Officer, Better Medicare Alliance
- Mike Thompson, President and Chief Executive Officer, National Alliance of Healthcare Purchaser Coalitions
Location: Ballroom
- Moderator: Tricia Neuman, Senior Vice President, The Kaiser Family Foundation
- Melinda Buntin, Chair, Department of Health Policy, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine
- Christine Eibner, Chair in Policy Analysis, Director of the Payment, Cost, and Coverage Program, RAND Corporation
- Matthew Fiedler, Fellow, Economic Studies, USC-Brookings Schaeffer Initiative for Health Policy
- Steve Zuckerman, Vice President of Health Policy, The Urban Institute
Location: Zenger Room
- Moderator: Cristina Boccuti, Director of Health Policy, West Health Policy Center
- Sheila Burke, Strategic Advisor, Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz
- Tara O’Neill Hayes, Director of Human Welfare Policy, American Action Forum
- Frederic Riccardi, President, Medicare Rights Center
- Sara Rosenbaum, Harold and Jane Hirsh Professor of Health Law and Policy, School of Public Health and Health Services, George Washington University
3:10 PM Break
3:30 PM Panel 4: Financing Medicare Expansion Proposals
Any Medicare expansion proposal will affect health care costs and the distribution of the financing burden across the population, relieving pressure in some ways and increasing it in others. What are the cost implications of extending Medicare to a broader population? How might the burden of paying for health care be spread across different payers, including the federal government, state governments, private insurers, employers and employees, taxpayers, and beneficiaries? How might this distribution differ for various proposals? If Medicare expansion proposals require additional funding, what are potential ways this funding might be raised?
- Moderator: Helaine Olen, Journalist, Washington Post
- Katherine Baicker, Dean, Harris School of Public Policy
- John Holahan, Institute Fellow, the Urban Institute
- Maya MacGuineas, President, Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget
4:30 PM Closing Keynote: Donald M. Berwick, President Emeritus and Senior Fellow, Institute for Healthcare Improvement, and former Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services
5:00 PM Closing Remarks: Renée M. Landers, National Academy of Social Insurance Vice Chair, and Co-Principal Investigator, Academy Study Panel on Medicare Eligibility
General:
Academy Member
Young Professional: 35 and under
Questions? Please contact nasievents@nasi.org.
**Refund Policy: Refund requests must be made in writing (via email, fax, or mail). All refunds will be paid (by check or credit card, based on payment method) based on the following schedule:
Requests made between Oct. 1, 2019 - Jan. 31, 2020: Full refund minus $30 cancellation fee
Requests made between Feb. 1, 2020 - Feb. 21, 2020: 50% of registration fee
No refunds after Friday, February 21, 2020
| Registration Type | Super Early Bird (Ends 10/31/19) | Early Bird (11/1/19 - 1/31/20) | Regular (2/1/20 - 3/5/20) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full Conference | $500 | $650 | $900 |
| Full Conference - .gov, .edu, or .org | $400 | $450 | $600 |
| Full Conference - Group rate (4 or more registrants) | $400 | $400 | $500 |
| March 5 only - (No special rate for .gov, .org or .edu) | $350 | $450 | $650 |
| March 4 only - (No special rate for .gov, .org, or .edu) |
$150 | $200 | $250 |
Academy Member
| Registration Type | Super Early Bird (Ends 10/31/19) | Early Bird (11/1/19 - 1/31/20) | Regular (2/1/20 - 3/5/20) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full Conference | $350 | $400 | $550 |
| March 5 only | $250 | $250 | $400 |
| March 4 only | $100 | $100 | $150 |
Young Professional: 35 and under
| Registration Type | Super Early Bird (Ends 10/31/19) | Early Bird (11/1/19 - 1/31/20) | Regular (2/1/20 - 3/5/20) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full Conference | $200 | $300 | $400 |
| March 5 only | $150 | $200 | $250 |
| March 4 only | $50 | $100 | $150 |
Questions? Please contact nasievents@nasi.org.
**Refund Policy: Refund requests must be made in writing (via email, fax, or mail). All refunds will be paid (by check or credit card, based on payment method) based on the following schedule:
Requests made between Oct. 1, 2019 - Jan. 31, 2020: Full refund minus $30 cancellation fee
Requests made between Feb. 1, 2020 - Feb. 21, 2020: 50% of registration fee
No refunds after Friday, February 21, 2020
Speakers listed 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 encompasess 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. He 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.
Peter S. Arno is an economist and Senior Fellow and Director of Health Policy Research at the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and a Senior Fellow at the National Academy of Social Insurance. Arno received his doctorate in economics at the New School for Social Research and was a Pew Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Health Policy Studies and the Institute for Health and Aging at UCSF, a Scholar of the American Foundation for AIDS Research and the recipient of the Robert Wood Johnson Investigator Award in Health Policy.
In addition to Arno’s current work on economic and financial analyses of universal health care proposals for the US, California and New York, his recent research has examined the impact of Social Security and the Earned Income Tax Credit on population health; integrating social determinants of health with treatment and prevention; food insecurity and the elderly; economics of long-term care; social and geographic determinants of obesity; and regulation and pricing practices of the pharmaceutical industry. .
William J. Arnone is Chief Executive Officer of the National Academy of Social Insurance. As a partner with Ernst & Young LLP for 15 years up to 2009, he was responsible for the strategic positioning, design, management, marketing, and thought leadership of retirement and financial education and counseling in employer-sponsored programs. Prior to joining Ernst & Young, he was Principal, Benefit Consultant, and National Director of Financial & Retirement Planning Services for Buck Consultants, Inc. (now part of Xerox). He joined Buck in 1981 after serving as Director, Senior Security Services, for the New York City Department for the Aging. He also served as Consultant on Employment of Older Workers for the Florence V. Burden Foundation in New York. He previously was Executive Director of Helping Aged Needing Direction in the Bronx. He served as a staff associate with the New York City Board of Correction. He is co-author of Ernst & Young's Retirement Planning Guide (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2001). He is an associate editor of The Columbia Retirement Handbook (Columbia University Press, 1994). He is a Founding Board Member of the Academy and served on the Academy's Board of Directors from 1986 to 1994. He served as the Chair of the Academy’s Board of Directors from 2013 to 2016. He co-chaired the Academy's 2010 conference, "Beyond the Bad Economy" and has served on the Academy's Strategic Planning Committee and chaired its advisory committee for Ford Foundation organizational awards to enable the voices of vulnerable segments of the U.S. population to participate effectively in the debate on the future of Social Security. He received a J.D. from New York University Law School in 1973. He was selected as one of the first Charles H. Revson Fellows on the Future of New York City by the Columbia University School of Business for 1979-1980.
Katherine Baicker is Dean and the Emmett Dedmon Professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. Baicker’s research focuses primarily on the factors that drive the distribution, generosity, and effectiveness of public and private health insurance, with a particular focus on the effect of health system reform. She is currently one of the leaders of a research program investigating the many effects of expanding health insurance coverage in the context of a randomized Medicaid expansion in Oregon. Her research has been published in journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, Science, Health Affairs, JAMA, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics. Baicker is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine (IOM), the National Academy of Social Insurance, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She holds appointments as a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and as an affiliate of the Abdul Latif Poverty Action Lab. She serves on the Congressional Budget Office’s Panel of Health Advisers, on the Advisory Board of the National Institute for Health Care Management, as a Trustee of the Mayo Clinic and of NORC, and on the Board of Directors of Eli Lilly and of HMS Holdings. Baicker earned her B.A. in economics from Yale and her Ph.D. in economics from Harvard.
Robert Berenson, MD joined Urban Institute as a fellow in 2003, where he conducts research and provides policy analysis primarily on health care delivery issues, particularly related to Medicare payment policy, pricing power in commercial insurance markets, and new forms of health delivery based on reinvigorated primary care practices.
In 2012, Berenson completed a three-year term on the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, the last two years as vice chair. From 1998 to 2000, he was in charge of Medicare payment policy and private health plan contracting in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Previously, he served as an assistant director of the White House Domestic Policy Staff under President Carter.
Berenson is a board-certified internist who practiced for 20 years, the last 12 years in a Washington, DC group practice. While practicing, he helped organize and manage a successful preferred provider organization serving the Washington, DC metropolitan area. He is co-author of The Managed Care Blues and How to Cure Them with Walter Zelman, and Medicare Prospective Payment Policy and the Shaping of U.S. Health Care, with Rick Mayes. He publishes frequently in numerous publications, including the New England Journal of Medicine, Health Affairs, New York Times, and New Republic. Berenson is a graduate of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, a fellow of the American College of Physicians, and on the faculty at the George Washington University School of Public Health.
Donald M. Berwick, MD is President Emeritus and Senior Fellow at Institute for Healthcare Improvement. He is also former Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). A pediatrician by background, Berwick has served on the faculty of the Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health, and on the staffs of Boston's Children's Hospital Medical Center, Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Brigham and Women's Hospital. He has also served as Vice Chair of the US Preventive Services Task Force, the first "Independent Member" of the American Hospital Association Board of Trustees, and Chair of the National Advisory Council of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. He served two terms on the Institute of Medicine's (IOM's) Governing Council, was a member of the IOM's Global Health Board, and served on President Clinton's Advisory Commission on Consumer Protection and Quality in the Healthcare Industry. Recognized as a leading authority on health care quality and improvement, Berwick has received numerous awards for his contributions. In 2005, he was appointed "Honorary Knight Commander of the British Empire" by Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II in recognition of his work with the British National Health Service. Berwick is the author or co-author of over 160 scientific articles and six books. He currently serves as Lecturer in the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School.
Cristina Boccuti is Director of Health Policy at the West Health Policy Center. She is an expert on national health policy, focusing particularly on Medicare reform, healthcare spending and health workforce analysis. She co-leads West Health initiatives supporting policies and programs to lower healthcare costs and transition to value-based care. Before joining the West Health Policy Center, Boccuti was an associate director at the Kaiser Family Foundation, where she analyzed Medicare reform proposals as part of a major initiative on the future of Medicare. Prior to her work at the Foundation, Boccuti held senior positions at the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) and the Health Resources and Services Administration. She has frequently advised federal policymakers on technical considerations and policy implications of Medicare and health workforce reform proposals.
Boccuti has authored numerous publications in leading journals, has been cited and quoted in local and national news media, and is a frequent presenter and expert panelist at national conferences. She is currently serving on a 2019-2020 National Academy of Social Insurance panel examining potential changes to Medicare eligibility. Before transitioning to health policy, Boccuti was a speech-language pathologist at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Chicago. She completed her graduate studies at Georgetown University and her undergraduate studies at Cornell University.
Melinda B. Buntin is the Mike Curb Professor of Health Policy and chair of the Department of Health Policy at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. Her research interests include health care costs and growth, provider payment systems, and health insurance markets. She previously served as deputy assistant director for health at the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), where she was responsible for managing and directing studies of health care and health care financing issues in the Health, Retirement, and Long-Term Analysis division. Prior to joining CBO, Buntin worked at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT and RAND. She has a Ph.D. in health policy with a concentration in economics from Harvard University.
Sheila Burke is a strategic advisor at Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz. Burke also continues as a faculty member at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University where she teaches a number of health policy courses and co-directs a public policy simulation exercise. From 1996 to 2000, she was executive dean and a lecturer in public policy at the Kennedy School. She also serves as Distinguished Visitor at the O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University.
Burke served for 19 years on Capitol Hill. Early in her career, she was a member of the staff of the Senate Finance Committee responsible for legislation relating to Medicare, Medicaid and other health programs. She ultimately became Deputy Staff Director of the Finance Committee. She went on to serve as Deputy Chief of Staff to Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole and later as his Chief of Staff. In these roles, she was involved with numerous legislative issues including those related to Medicare, Medicaid and the Maternal and Child Health programs, welfare reform, budget reconciliation and the previous legislative efforts to reform health care. In 1995, she was elected as Secretary of the Senate, which is the chief administrative officer of the United States Senate. Ms. Burke served from 2000 – 2007 as a member of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC).
Sara R. Collins is vice president for health care coverage and access at The Commonwealth Fund. An economist, Collins directs the Fund’s program on insurance coverage and access. She also directs the Fund’s research initiative on Tracking Health System Performance. Since joining the Fund in 2002, Collins has led several multi-year national surveys on health insurance and authored numerous reports, issue briefs and journal articles on health insurance coverage, health reform, and the Affordable Care Act. She has provided invited testimony before several Congressional committees and subcommittees. Prior to joining the Fund, Collins was associate director/senior research associate at the New York Academy of Medicine, Division of Health and Science Policy. Earlier in her career, she was an associate editor at U.S. News & World Report, a senior economist at Health Economics Research, and a senior health policy analyst in the New York City Office of the Public Advocate. She holds an A.B. in economics from Washington University and a Ph.D. in economics from George Washington University.
Zack Cooper is an associate professor of health policy and of economics at Yale University where he also serves as director of Health Policy at the school’s Institution for Social and Policy Studies. Cooper is a health economist whose work is focused on producing data-driven scholarship that can inform public policy. In his academic work, he has analyzed the impact of competition in hospital and insurance markets, studied the influence of price transparency on consumer behavior, and examined the influence of electoral politics on health care spending growth. Cooper has published his research in leading economics and medical journals including the Quarterly Journal of Economics and the New England Journal of Medicine. He has also presented his research at the White House, the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Department of Health and Human Services. The New York Times wrote that his work is “likely to force a rethinking of some conventional wisdom about health care”.
Cooper received his undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago and his PhD from the London School of Economics, where he received the Richard Titmuss prize for Best PhD thesis. He was an Economic and Social Science Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow in economics at the LSE’s Centre for Economic Performance, where he remains a faculty associate.
Maya Rockeymoore Cummings is founder, president, and CEO of Global Policy Solutions, a certified B Corporation and mission driven strategy firm, dedicated to helping community-based, philanthropic, academic, governmental, and corporate organizations achieve strategic objectives. The firm specializes in coalition building, public policy analysis and research, program development, project management, and government relations.
A noted speaker and author, Rockeymoore Cummings' areas of expertise include health, social insurance, economic security, education, technology, women’s issues and youth civic participation. She is the author of The Political Action Handbook: A How to Guide for the Hip-Hop Generation and co-editor of Strengthening Community: Social Insurance in a Diverse America among many other articles and chapters. Her frequent speaking engagements have included invitations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Economic Policy Institute, U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives, Congressional Progressive Caucus, Drexel University, Women Donors Network, National Association of Black Journalists, and Grantmakers in Aging among many other organizations. She has been quoted extensively in publications such as the Washington Post and New York Times and has appeared on MSNBC, CNN, and C-SPAN among other news outlets.
Rockeymoore Cummings previously served as the chair of the Maryland Democratic Party, Vice President of Research and Programs at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, Senior Resident Scholar at the National Urban League, Chief of Staff to former Congressman Charles Rangel, Professional Staff on the House Ways and Means Committee, and as a CBCF Legislative Fellow in the office of former Congressman Melvin Watt among other positions.
Elizabeth Docteur is an independent consultant with 25 years of experience working to inform health policy decision-making through positions in the U.S. government, the international arena, and civil society. Docteur is a former vice president of the Center for Studying Health System Change, a research group that used qualitative methods, including longitudinal analysis of selected local markets, to track developments in financing and delivery of health care. She also served as deputy chief of the health division at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), where she led work to study the effectiveness and efficiency of health systems internationally. She has held positions in both the legislative and executive branches of the U.S. government, including with President Clinton's Advisory Commission on Consumer Protection and Quality in Health Care, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, and the Physician Payment Review Commission. She also served as the director of health policy at the National Academy of Social Insurance. Docteur holds a master’s degree in public policy analysis and a bachelor’s degree in political science and history, magna cum laude, from the University of Rochester.
Christine Eibner is the Paul O'Neill Alcoa Chair in Policy Analysis; director, Payment, Cost, and Coverage Program; and a senior economist at the RAND Corporation. She is director of RAND COMPARE, a project that uses economic modeling to predict how individuals and employers will respond to major health care policy changes. She is also a professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. Eibner's research focuses on the effect of health insurance regulations and reforms, including the Affordable Care Act. She is also leading an evaluation of CMS's Medicare Advantage Value-Based Insurance Design model test. Eibner earned her bachelor's degree in English and economics from the College of William and Mary and her doctorate in economics from the University of Maryland, College Park.
Matthew Fiedler is a fellow with the USC-Brookings Schaeffer Initiative for Health Policy. His research examines a range of topics in health care economics and health care policy. Prior to joining the Brookings Institution in January 2017, Fiedler served as Chief Economist of the Council of Economic Advisers, where he oversaw the Council's work on health care policy, including implementation of the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance expansions and health care delivery system reforms. Fiedler currently serves on a technical review panel for the Congressional Budget Office’s health insurance simulation model. Fiedler holds a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University and a B.A. in mathematics and economics from Swarthmore College.
Tara O'Neill Hayes is the Director of Human Welfare Policy at American Action Forum (AAF). Hayes' research focuses on federal policy related to individuals’ health and economic wellbeing. Her portfolio includes such areas as nutrition assistance and childcare programs, senior services, anti-homelessness and self-sufficiency initiatives, and other poverty–alleviation programs. Hayes formerly served as AAF’s Deputy Director of Health Care Policy.
Hayes has spoken at numerous briefings and policy events. Her research and insights have appeared in numerous media outlets, including The Washington Post, Forbes, Politico, and Kaiser Health News.
Before joining AAF, Hayes worked as a Legislative Assistant in the U.S. House of Representatives for various members from her home state of South Carolina, covering a broad portfolio of issues. She earned her master’s in public policy and management from Carnegie Mellon University. In 2014, she was named a David Winston Health Policy Scholar. She was elected to the National Academy of Social Insurance in 2019.
John Holahan is an Institute fellow in the Health Policy Center at Urban, where he previously served as center director for over 30 years. His recent work focuses on health reform, the uninsured, and health expenditure growth, developing proposals for health system reform most recently in Massachusetts. He examines the coverage, costs, and economic impact of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), including the costs of Medicaid expansion as well as the macroeconomic effects of the law. He has also analyzed the health status of Medicaid and exchange enrollees, and the implications for costs and exchange premiums. Holahan has written on competition in insurer and provider markets and implications for premiums and government subsidy costs as well as on the cost-containment provisions of the ACA.
Holahan has conducted significant work on Medicaid and Medicare reform, including analyses on the recent growth in Medicaid expenditures, implications of block grants and swap proposals on states and the federal government, and the effect of state decisions to expand Medicaid in the ACA on federal and state spending. Recent work on Medicare includes a paper on reforms that could both reduce budgetary impacts and improve the structure of the program. His work on the uninsured explores reasons for the growth in the uninsured over time and the effects of proposals to expand health insurance coverage on the number of uninsured and the cost to federal and state governments.
Chris Jennings is the Founder and President of Jennings Policy Strategies (JPS), a nationally respected health care consulting firm. Chris Jennings is an over three decades-long health policy veteran of the White House, the Congress and the private sector. In 2014, he departed from his second tour of duty in the White House where he served President Obama as Deputy Assistant to the President for Health Policy and Coordinator of Health Reform. He served in a similar capacity in the Clinton White House for nearly eight years.
From his positions in the executive branch, Jennings has helped implement the Affordable Care Act’s access and delivery reform provisions (for President Obama) as well as played leadership roles in the development, passage and implementation of bipartisan health reforms, such as the Children’s Health Insurance Program, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA) of 1997 and major Medicare reforms in the Balanced Budget Act (BBA) of 1997 (for President Clinton).
In his decade of service in the U.S. Senate, he served as the Deputy Director of the Special Committee on Aging for three Senators (Glenn, Pryor, and Melcher) and led major reform efforts in the areas of long-term care, prescription drug coverage/cost containment, and rural health care. In this capacity, he also served in a major role for the U.S. Bipartisan Commission on Comprehensive Health Care (also known as the “Pepper Commission”).
Outside of government service, Jennings has been a senior health policy advisor to seven Presidential campaigns, the 2008 and 2016 Democratic Platform Drafting Committees, and multiple gubernatorial and Senate candidates. Recognizing his pragmatic nature and experience with key Democratic policymakers, the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) sought Chris to serve as a senior advisor on a number of health reform projects, including reports and recommendations on access, delivery reforms, cost containment, and long-term care.
Chip Kahn is President and CEO of the Federation of American Hospitals (FAH). His extensive health policy expertise, outstanding leadership abilities, lengthy Capitol Hill experience, and proven campaign and communications skills make him one of Washington, DC’s most effective and accomplished trade association executives. He is one of only six health care leaders who have appeared on Modern Healthcare magazine’s annual “100 Most Influential People in Healthcare” list (formerly the “100 Most Powerful People in Healthcare” list) since its inception. Kahn is currently at the forefront of national initiatives to shape policy for advancing health care quality and information technology. He represents the FAH as a member of the Measure Applications Partnership (MAP) Coordinating Committee of the National Quality Forum (NQF), a multi-stakeholder private-public partnership for developing and implementing a national strategy for health care quality measurement. He is also a former member of the NQF’s Governing Board. Kahn is the recipient of the B’nai B’rith 2016 National Health Care Award, which has recognized exceptional trailblazers in the health care industry for more than 30 years.
Katie Keith provides “Following the ACA” rapid response analysis for the Health Affairs Blog. She is a principal at Keith Policy Solutions, LLC, where she advises nonprofits and foundations on health care issues and conducts original legal, policy, and qualitative analysis to support policy goals. Her work includes an emphasis on implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and its impact on underserved populations, such as the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. Keith is a co-founder and steering committee member of Out2Enroll, a national initiative to connect LGBT people with coverage options under the ACA. She is also an appointed consumer representative to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners and an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center where she teaches courses on the ACA and LGBT health law and policy. Keith maintains a part-time appointment at Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms and serves as a scholar with the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law. She is a former research professor at Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms where she specialized in state and federal implementation of the ACA and wrote widely on topics that include the health insurance Marketplaces, enforcement, and nondiscrimination. Keith received her law degree from the Georgetown University Law Center and holds a Master’s in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University.
Renée M. Landers is professor of law at Suffolk University Law School and teaches administrative law, constitutional law, and health law. She is the Faculty Director of the school’s Health and Biomedical Law Concentration. President of the Boston Bar Association in 2003-2004, she was the first woman of color and the first law professor to serve in that position. She has worked in private practice and served as Deputy General Counsel for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Policy Development at the U.S. Department of Justice during the Clinton Administration. Landers has been a member of various boards and commissions including, the Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice of the American Bar Association, the National Academy of Social Insurance, Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts, and the Massachusetts Commission on Judicial Conduct. She served on the task force that drafted the revised Code of Judicial Conduct effective in 2016. Currently, she is a member of the Committee on Judicial Ethics. Previously, she was a member of the Supreme Judicial Court’s committees studying gender bias and racial and ethnic bias in the courts. The focus of Landers’ work has been on health care regulation, gender, and racial and ethnic bias in the legal system. She is the author of an articles on the potential for Massachusetts health care reform initiatives to eliminate racial and ethnic disparities in health care and aspects of the Affordable Care Act including the impact of the Medicaid expansion. She is a regular commentator on legal developments in constitutional law, health law, and administrative law for media organizations. Landers is a graduate of Radcliffe College of Harvard University and Boston College Law School.
Lauren LeRoy is a strategic adviser to foundations, nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and academia on health and policy issues. Current professional interests include advice on organizational positioning and strategy, policy analytics and strategy, executive coaching and professional mentoring, and facilitation of meetings and forums. She was previously president and CEO of Grantmakers In Health; executive director of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, a nonpartisan congressional advisory body; executive director of the Physician Payment Review Commission; associate director of The Commonwealth Fund Commission on Elderly People Living Alone; assistant director of the UCSF Institute for Health Policy Studies; and health analyst in the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Research interests and published works include Medicare reform, the health workforce, health and aging, health system reform, and the work of health philanthropy in improving people’s health, access to care, and health equity. She is a Member of the National Academy of Social Insurance; fellow of the National Academies; chair of several Institute of Medicine study committees; member of the dean's policy advisory council at the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health; chair of the National Advisory Council of the California Health Benefits Review Program; and senior fellow at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. LeRoy holds a doctorate in social policy planning from the University of California, Berkeley.
Maya MacGuineas is the president of the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Her areas of expertise include budget, tax, and economic policy. As a leading budget expert for the past twenty years and a political independent, she has worked closely with members of both parties and serves as a trusted resource on Capitol Hill. MacGuineas testifies regularly before Congress and has published broadly, including regularly in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Atlantic, and numerous other outlets. She also appears regularly as a commentator on television.
MacGuineas oversees a number of the Committee’s projects including the grassroots coalition Fix the Debt; the Committee’s Fiscal Institute; and FixUS, a project seeking to better understand the root causes of our nation’s growing divisions and deteriorating political system, and to work with others to bring attention to these issues and the need to fix them. Her most recent area of focus is on the future of the economy, technology, and capitalism.
Gwendolyn Roberts Majette is an Associate Professor of Law at the Center for Health Law and Policy at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. Majette received her undergraduate degree from Emory University, her J.D. from George Washington University School of Law, and her LL.M. in Global Health Law, with distinction from Georgetown University Law Center. Majette’s scholarship focuses on patients' rights, delivery system reform, health disparities, global health, and health care reform. She has been called upon by the United States Commission for Civil Rights, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the World Health Organization, and is cited in one of the leading health law texts. She has also been quoted in the national media and appeared as a legal expert on local newscasts regarding health care reform.
Majette has diverse experience working on health care and delivery system reform matters as an expert advisor to the Co-Chair of the Massachusetts Provider Price Variation Commission, as a member of the executive team for a state-based exchange, and as a legislative fellow working on Medicare, Medicaid, and Health Care Reform policy with the United States Congress.
Mark Miller is executive vice president of health care at Arnold Ventures where he works to lower the cost and improve the value of health care. He joins the team with more than 30 years of experience developing and implementing health policy, including prior positions as the executive director of Medicare Payment Advisory Commission; assistant director of Health and Human Resources at the Congressional Budget Office; deputy director of health plans at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services; health financing branch chief at the Office of Management and Budget; and senior research associate at the Urban Institute.
Miller has extensive experience identifying emerging health care issues, developing policy solutions, working with policymakers, and engaging diverse stakeholders. Over the course of his career, he has been directly involved in the development of major health legislation such as the Balanced Budget Act; the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act; and the Affordable Care Act. Miller holds a Ph.D. in public policy analysis from the State University of New York at Binghamton and an M.A. and B.A. in political science from Old Dominion University.
Marilyn Moon 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 the American Institutes for Research (AIR) and from 2013 to 2018 she directed the Center on Aging at AIR. A nationally-known economist and expert on Medicare, aging, consumer health issues, and health care financing, Moon 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 written extensively on health policy and other social insurance issues; she wrote a column on health reform for the Washington Post in the 1990s. She has served on a number of boards for non-profit organizations, including the Medicare Rights Center, the National Academy of Social Insurance and the Holy Cross Health System. She 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.
Tricia Neuman is senior vice president of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and director of the Foundation’s Program on Medicare Policy. There she oversees the Foundation’s policy analysis and research pertaining to Medicare, and health coverage and care for aging Americans and people with disabilities. A widely cited Medicare policy expert, Neuman focuses on topics such as the health and economic security of older adults, the role of Medicare Advantage plans, Medicare and out-of-pocket spending trends, prescription drug costs, payment and delivery system reforms, and policy options to strengthen Medicare for the future. She has authored numerous papers pertaining to Medicare, has been invited several times to present expert testimony before Congressional committees, and has appeared and been quoted as an independent expert by major, national media outlets. Before joining the Foundation in 1995, Neuman served on the professional staff of the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health in the U.S. House of Representatives and on the staff of the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging working on health and long-term care issues. Neuman received a doctorate of science degree in health policy and management and a masters of science degree in health finance and management from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. She received her bachelor’s degree from Wesleyan University.
Helaine Olen is an award-winning opinion writer for The Washington Post Opinion section. An expert on money and society with a deep understanding of public policy, she writes, speaks and consults on issues including Social Security, retirement, healthcare, student loans and women’s financial issues.
Olen has appeared on The Daily Show, Frontline, C-Span, the BBC, MSNBC, All Things Considered, Marketplace and more to share her forward-thinking commentary on politics, economics and consumer and regulatory issues. She also speaks to professional, university and think thank audiences about these topics; her talk on the effects of financial inequality for New America Foundation remains one of the think tank’s most-watched videos on YouTube. Author of the bestselling book Pound Foolish: Exposing The Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry and co-author of The Index Card: Why Personal Finance Doesn’t Have to be So Complicated, Olen’s writing has also been published in many publications including The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Nation, and more. Previously, Olen reported on money, business and the economy for Slate, where she originated the highly popular and award-winning “Ask The Bills” advice column.
Named one of Business Insider’s “50 Women Who Are Changing the World” and one of the “Top 30 Most Influential People in Personal Finance and Wealth” by MoneyTips.com, Olen has earned a number of fellowships and grants, including the National Press Foundation’s Retirement Issues Program, Columbia University Age Boom Academy, and the New York Times Company Foundation Fellowship.
Harold Pollack is the Helen Ross Professor at the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago. He is also an affiliate professor in the Biological Sciences Collegiate Division and the Department of Public Health Sciences.
Co-founder of the University of Chicago Crime Lab, he is co-director of the University of Chicago Health Lab. He is a committee member of the Center for Health Administration Studies (CHAS) at the University of Chicago. His current NIH-funded research concerns improved services for individuals at the boundaries of the behavioral health and criminal justice systems, disabilities, and two major new efforts to address the opioid epidemic in Illinois and across the nation.
Past President of the Health Politics and Policy section of the American Political Science Association, Pollack has been appointed to three committees of the National Academy of Sciences. He received his undergraduate degree, magna cum laude, in electrical engineering and computer science from Princeton University. He holds master's and doctorate degrees in public policy from the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Before coming to SSA, Pollack was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholar in Health Policy Research at Yale University and taught Health Management and Policy at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.
He has published widely at the interface between poverty policy and public health. His research appears in such journals as Addiction, Journal of the American Medical Association, American Journal of Public Health, Health Services Research, Pediatrics, and Social Service Review. His journalism regularly appears in such outlets as Washington Post, the Nation, the New York Times, New Republic, and other popular publications. His American Prospect essay, "Lessons from an Emergency Room Nightmare" was selected for the collection Best American Medical Writing, 2009.
Frederic Riccardi serves as the president of the Medicare Rights Center. As vice president of client services, Riccardi oversaw all of Medicare Rights’ client programming, including its National Consumer Helpline—which handles around 20,000 questions each year—and developed and implemented a variety of successful programs with diverse partners, including two new ombudsman programs for New Yorkers with specific health care needs. For over a decade, he has been a lead Medicare advocate nationally, helping Medicare beneficiaries and families access and afford their care and advising professionals on how to better serve their clients. He has collaborated with an array of stakeholders to help inform federal and state health care policy and is a frequent spokesperson on Medicare issues in major media outlets. Riccardi is also a lecturer at the Columbia University School of Social Work.
Sara Rosenbaum is the Harold and Jane Hirsh Professor of Health Law and Policy and Chair of the Department of Health Policy at the Milken Institute School of Public Health, George Washington University. She also directs the Center for Health Services Research and Policy and the Hirsh Health Law and Policy Program. During 1993 and 1994, Rosenbaum worked for the White House Domestic Policy Council, where she directed the legislative drafting of The Health Security Act for President Clinton. Beginning her career as a legal services attorney, she served on the staff of the Children’s Defense Fund from 1979 to 1992, where she directed the Fund’s Health Division and Department of Programs and Policy. A nationally recognized expert in health insurance, managed care, civil rights and health policy and health care for the poor and underserved, Rosenbaum has authored dozens of books and articles on a wide range of topics and holds positions on numerous boards. A member of the National Academy of Social Insurance since 1994, Rosenbaum received her law degree from Boston University School of Law.
Elisabeth Rosenthal, MD is the Editor-in-Chief at Kaiser Health News (KHN). She joined KHN in September 2016 after 22 years as a correspondent with The New York Times, where she covered a variety of beats from health care to environment and did a stint in the Beijing bureau. While in China, she covered SARS, bird flu and the emergence of HIV/AIDS in rural areas. Rosenthal’s 2013-14 series, “Paying Till It Hurts,” won many prizes for both health reporting and its creative use of digital tools. Her book, An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back (Penguin Random House, 2017), was a New York Times best-seller and a Washington Post notable book of the year. She is a graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Medical School and briefly practiced medicine in a New York City emergency room before converting to journalism.
Allyson Y. Schwartz, a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania who served from 2005-2015, is a nationally recognized health care leader. Throughout her professional life she has worked on issues such as affordability, primary care, coordinated care, and increased access to coverage. Today, Schwartz serves as president and CEO of the Better Medicare Alliance, a research and advocacy organization that engages 460,000 grassroots beneficiary advocates and 143 allied organizations – including health providers, health plans, professional associations and aging service agencies – in support of Medicare Advantage.
A former health service executive, Schwartz was elected to the Pennsylvania State Senate in 1990, serving 14 years until her election to Congress. There, Schwartz was the driving force behind Pennsylvania’s CHIP program, which was a model for the federal CHIP program five years later.
In Congress, Schwartz was appointed to the Ways and Means committee and served as a senior member of the Budget Committee. In both capacities, Schwartz was a strong advocate for Medicare. She was the leader in Congress on physician payment reform to encourage value over volume, supported research, innovation, and use of technology to improve quality, efficiency, and contain costs. Schwartz was instrumental in the passage of landmark health reform legislation, authoring key provisions such as the ban on pre-existing condition exclusions for children and increased access to primary care.
She serves as a member of RAND’s Technical Expert Panel on the Medicare Advantage Stars Rating System and is a member of the CMS Advisory Panel on Outreach and Education. Schwartz is also a member of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Advisory Board, participates in an advisory group for Avalere Health’s Patient-Perspective Value Framework, and served as Co-Chair of the Health and Housing for Seniors Task Force of the Bipartisan Policy Center. Locally, she is a member of the Advisory Board for the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School “Penn Wharton Budget Model”. Schwartz earned a B.A. from Simmons College, and a Master of Social Service from Bryn Mawr College.
Paul Starr is professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University and Stuart Professor of communications and public affairs at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School. He also serves as co-editor of The American Prospect, a liberal magazine that he co-founded in 1990 with Robert Kuttner and Robert Reich.
Starr's work addresses a wide range of questions in politics, public policy, and social theory. Within sociology, his current interests include institutional analysis, political sociology, and the sociology of knowledge, technology, and information, especially as they bear on democracy, equality, and freedom. During 1993 he served as a senior health policy advisor at the White House.
Starr has written three books about health care institutions and policies. The Social Transformation of American Medicine (1983) won the Bancroft Prize (American History), C. Wright Mills Award (Sociology), and Pulitzer Prize (General Nonfiction). The Logic of Health Care Reform (1992) laid out the case for a system of universal health insurance provided through a choice of private plans in what are now called insurance exchanges. His most recent book on health-care history and politics is Remedy and Reaction: The Peculiar American Struggle over Health-Care Reform (2011, revised ed. 2013).
Starr has also written extensively on media, the public, and liberalism. His 2004 book The Creation of the Media: Political Origins of Modern Communications received the Goldsmith Book Prize. Freedom's Power (2007) is an account of both the philosophical and institutional development of liberalism from its classical to modern phases. He is currently working on a project on the entrenchment of power, law, and social structure, as well as a book about unanticipated changes in the development of post-industrial societies.
Michael Thompson is the president and CEO of the National Alliance of Healthcare Purchaser Coalitions (National Alliance), the only nonprofit, purchaser-led organization with a national and regional structure dedicated to driving health and healthcare value across the country.
Prior to joining the National Alliance, Thompson was a Principal at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) for 20 years. He is a nationally recognized thought leader for business health strategies and health system reform. Thompson has worked with major employers and other stakeholders on sustainable cost reduction, integrated health, wellness and consumerism, retiree health, private health exchanges and health reform. Known for developing and promoting collaborative cross-sector health industry initiatives, Thompson participated on the steering board of the World Economic Forum’s “Working toward Wellness” initiative and co-founded the Private Exchange Evaluation Collaborative (PEEC). Prior to PwC, Thompson served as an executive with diverse roles with Prudential Healthcare for over 17 years.
Thompson is a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries, serving on the Health Practice Council, and chairs the Medicare Sub-Committee of the American Academy of Actuaries (AAA). He is also widely recognized as a leading national advocate for mental health and wellbeing and was past president of the New York City chapter of the National Alliance for Mental Illness (NAMI). Thompson was an active member of the board of the Northeast Business Group on Health for 11 years.
Cori Uccello an actuary and the senior health fellow at the American Academy of Actuaries. She serves as the actuarial profession’s chief public policy liaison on health issues. In this role, she promotes the formulation of sound health policy by providing nonpartisan technical assistance to federal and state policymakers and regulators. Uccello helped lead the Academy’s efforts to provide guidance to federal and state regulators regarding the implementation of various provisions in the Affordable Care Act (ACA), including those related to coverage and market reforms, actuarial value, and risk-sharing mechanisms. Her current work focuses on examining the implications of alternative coverage approaches and proposals to stabilize the market. She served two terms as a commissioner on the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), was a member of the 2010-2011 Technical Review Panel of the Medicare Trustees Report, and currently serves as a member of CBO’s panel of health advisors and on the technical review panel for CBO’s Health Insurance Simulation Model. She is a graduate of Boston College and received a master’s degree in public policy from Georgetown University.
Rodney Whitlock is the Vice President of McDermott+ Consulting. While working in Congress, Rodney served as former US Representative Charlie Norwood’s (R-GA) health policy director where he managed the Patients’ Bill of Rights (S.1890), among other notable health policy matters. Whitlock then went on to serve Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) in the Senate. He first joined the Senate Finance Committee Staff as a health policy advisor to Chairman Grassley, and ultimately joined the Senator’s personal office as health policy director. During his time in the Senate, Whitlock served as the lead Republican staffer for Medicaid legislation from 2005 to 2010, and continued to serve Senator Grassley on all health-related issues through 2015. During his time in the Senate, Rodney helped staff Republicans in the Senate on such prominent and important legislation as the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006, CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2007 and 2009 and Affordable Care Act of 2010.
Whitlock received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Georgia. For the last 20 years, Whitlock has been an adjunct faculty member at the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health’s Department of Health Policy and Management, and the Graduate School of Political Management’s Department of Legislative Affairs. Hundreds of students have taken his courses and have gone on to pursue careers in Washington, DC.
Stephen Zuckerman is a senior fellow and vice president for health policy at the Urban Institute. He has studied health economics and health policy for 30 years and is a national expert on Medicare and Medicaid physician payment, including how payments affect enrollee access to care and the volume of services they receive. He is currently examining how payment and delivery system reforms can affect the availability of primary care services and studying the implementation and impact of the Affordable Care Act.
Zuckerman has published extensively on many topics, including the determinants of geographic differences in Medicare spending, Medicaid managed care, state coverage expansions for adults, changes in Medicare benefit design that could protect the most vulnerable beneficiaries, hospital rate setting, and the impact of undocumented immigrants on the US health care system. Other issues he has worked on include Medicaid financing arrangements used by states, crowd-out of private coverage by SCHIP, the health care safety net, and survey approaches for measuring insurance coverage. Zuckerman also codirected the development of the Geographic Practice Cost Indices used in the Medicare physician fee schedule. Before joining Urban, Zuckerman worked at the American Medical Association’s Center for Health Policy Research. He received his PhD in economics from Columbia University.
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 encompasess 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. He 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.
Peter S. Arno is an economist and Senior Fellow and Director of Health Policy Research at the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and a Senior Fellow at the National Academy of Social Insurance. Arno received his doctorate in economics at the New School for Social Research and was a Pew Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Health Policy Studies and the Institute for Health and Aging at UCSF, a Scholar of the American Foundation for AIDS Research and the recipient of the Robert Wood Johnson Investigator Award in Health Policy.
In addition to Arno’s current work on economic and financial analyses of universal health care proposals for the US, California and New York, his recent research has examined the impact of Social Security and the Earned Income Tax Credit on population health; integrating social determinants of health with treatment and prevention; food insecurity and the elderly; economics of long-term care; social and geographic determinants of obesity; and regulation and pricing practices of the pharmaceutical industry. .
William J. Arnone is Chief Executive Officer of the National Academy of Social Insurance. As a partner with Ernst & Young LLP for 15 years up to 2009, he was responsible for the strategic positioning, design, management, marketing, and thought leadership of retirement and financial education and counseling in employer-sponsored programs. Prior to joining Ernst & Young, he was Principal, Benefit Consultant, and National Director of Financial & Retirement Planning Services for Buck Consultants, Inc. (now part of Xerox). He joined Buck in 1981 after serving as Director, Senior Security Services, for the New York City Department for the Aging. He also served as Consultant on Employment of Older Workers for the Florence V. Burden Foundation in New York. He previously was Executive Director of Helping Aged Needing Direction in the Bronx. He served as a staff associate with the New York City Board of Correction. He is co-author of Ernst & Young's Retirement Planning Guide (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2001). He is an associate editor of The Columbia Retirement Handbook (Columbia University Press, 1994). He is a Founding Board Member of the Academy and served on the Academy's Board of Directors from 1986 to 1994. He served as the Chair of the Academy’s Board of Directors from 2013 to 2016. He co-chaired the Academy's 2010 conference, "Beyond the Bad Economy" and has served on the Academy's Strategic Planning Committee and chaired its advisory committee for Ford Foundation organizational awards to enable the voices of vulnerable segments of the U.S. population to participate effectively in the debate on the future of Social Security. He received a J.D. from New York University Law School in 1973. He was selected as one of the first Charles H. Revson Fellows on the Future of New York City by the Columbia University School of Business for 1979-1980.
Katherine Baicker is Dean and the Emmett Dedmon Professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. Baicker’s research focuses primarily on the factors that drive the distribution, generosity, and effectiveness of public and private health insurance, with a particular focus on the effect of health system reform. She is currently one of the leaders of a research program investigating the many effects of expanding health insurance coverage in the context of a randomized Medicaid expansion in Oregon. Her research has been published in journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, Science, Health Affairs, JAMA, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics. Baicker is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine (IOM), the National Academy of Social Insurance, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She holds appointments as a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and as an affiliate of the Abdul Latif Poverty Action Lab. She serves on the Congressional Budget Office’s Panel of Health Advisers, on the Advisory Board of the National Institute for Health Care Management, as a Trustee of the Mayo Clinic and of NORC, and on the Board of Directors of Eli Lilly and of HMS Holdings. Baicker earned her B.A. in economics from Yale and her Ph.D. in economics from Harvard.
Robert Berenson, MD joined Urban Institute as a fellow in 2003, where he conducts research and provides policy analysis primarily on health care delivery issues, particularly related to Medicare payment policy, pricing power in commercial insurance markets, and new forms of health delivery based on reinvigorated primary care practices.
In 2012, Berenson completed a three-year term on the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, the last two years as vice chair. From 1998 to 2000, he was in charge of Medicare payment policy and private health plan contracting in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Previously, he served as an assistant director of the White House Domestic Policy Staff under President Carter.
Berenson is a board-certified internist who practiced for 20 years, the last 12 years in a Washington, DC group practice. While practicing, he helped organize and manage a successful preferred provider organization serving the Washington, DC metropolitan area. He is co-author of The Managed Care Blues and How to Cure Them with Walter Zelman, and Medicare Prospective Payment Policy and the Shaping of U.S. Health Care, with Rick Mayes. He publishes frequently in numerous publications, including the New England Journal of Medicine, Health Affairs, New York Times, and New Republic. Berenson is a graduate of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, a fellow of the American College of Physicians, and on the faculty at the George Washington University School of Public Health.
Donald M. Berwick, MD is President Emeritus and Senior Fellow at Institute for Healthcare Improvement. He is also former Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). A pediatrician by background, Berwick has served on the faculty of the Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health, and on the staffs of Boston's Children's Hospital Medical Center, Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Brigham and Women's Hospital. He has also served as Vice Chair of the US Preventive Services Task Force, the first "Independent Member" of the American Hospital Association Board of Trustees, and Chair of the National Advisory Council of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. He served two terms on the Institute of Medicine's (IOM's) Governing Council, was a member of the IOM's Global Health Board, and served on President Clinton's Advisory Commission on Consumer Protection and Quality in the Healthcare Industry. Recognized as a leading authority on health care quality and improvement, Berwick has received numerous awards for his contributions. In 2005, he was appointed "Honorary Knight Commander of the British Empire" by Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II in recognition of his work with the British National Health Service. Berwick is the author or co-author of over 160 scientific articles and six books. He currently serves as Lecturer in the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School.
Cristina Boccuti is Director of Health Policy at the West Health Policy Center. She is an expert on national health policy, focusing particularly on Medicare reform, healthcare spending and health workforce analysis. She co-leads West Health initiatives supporting policies and programs to lower healthcare costs and transition to value-based care. Before joining the West Health Policy Center, Boccuti was an associate director at the Kaiser Family Foundation, where she analyzed Medicare reform proposals as part of a major initiative on the future of Medicare. Prior to her work at the Foundation, Boccuti held senior positions at the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) and the Health Resources and Services Administration. She has frequently advised federal policymakers on technical considerations and policy implications of Medicare and health workforce reform proposals.
Boccuti has authored numerous publications in leading journals, has been cited and quoted in local and national news media, and is a frequent presenter and expert panelist at national conferences. She is currently serving on a 2019-2020 National Academy of Social Insurance panel examining potential changes to Medicare eligibility. Before transitioning to health policy, Boccuti was a speech-language pathologist at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Chicago. She completed her graduate studies at Georgetown University and her undergraduate studies at Cornell University.
Melinda B. Buntin is the Mike Curb Professor of Health Policy and chair of the Department of Health Policy at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. Her research interests include health care costs and growth, provider payment systems, and health insurance markets. She previously served as deputy assistant director for health at the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), where she was responsible for managing and directing studies of health care and health care financing issues in the Health, Retirement, and Long-Term Analysis division. Prior to joining CBO, Buntin worked at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT and RAND. She has a Ph.D. in health policy with a concentration in economics from Harvard University.
Sheila Burke is a strategic advisor at Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz. Burke also continues as a faculty member at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University where she teaches a number of health policy courses and co-directs a public policy simulation exercise. From 1996 to 2000, she was executive dean and a lecturer in public policy at the Kennedy School. She also serves as Distinguished Visitor at the O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University.
Burke served for 19 years on Capitol Hill. Early in her career, she was a member of the staff of the Senate Finance Committee responsible for legislation relating to Medicare, Medicaid and other health programs. She ultimately became Deputy Staff Director of the Finance Committee. She went on to serve as Deputy Chief of Staff to Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole and later as his Chief of Staff. In these roles, she was involved with numerous legislative issues including those related to Medicare, Medicaid and the Maternal and Child Health programs, welfare reform, budget reconciliation and the previous legislative efforts to reform health care. In 1995, she was elected as Secretary of the Senate, which is the chief administrative officer of the United States Senate. Ms. Burke served from 2000 – 2007 as a member of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC).
Sara R. Collins is vice president for health care coverage and access at The Commonwealth Fund. An economist, Collins directs the Fund’s program on insurance coverage and access. She also directs the Fund’s research initiative on Tracking Health System Performance. Since joining the Fund in 2002, Collins has led several multi-year national surveys on health insurance and authored numerous reports, issue briefs and journal articles on health insurance coverage, health reform, and the Affordable Care Act. She has provided invited testimony before several Congressional committees and subcommittees. Prior to joining the Fund, Collins was associate director/senior research associate at the New York Academy of Medicine, Division of Health and Science Policy. Earlier in her career, she was an associate editor at U.S. News & World Report, a senior economist at Health Economics Research, and a senior health policy analyst in the New York City Office of the Public Advocate. She holds an A.B. in economics from Washington University and a Ph.D. in economics from George Washington University.
Zack Cooper is an associate professor of health policy and of economics at Yale University where he also serves as director of Health Policy at the school’s Institution for Social and Policy Studies. Cooper is a health economist whose work is focused on producing data-driven scholarship that can inform public policy. In his academic work, he has analyzed the impact of competition in hospital and insurance markets, studied the influence of price transparency on consumer behavior, and examined the influence of electoral politics on health care spending growth. Cooper has published his research in leading economics and medical journals including the Quarterly Journal of Economics and the New England Journal of Medicine. He has also presented his research at the White House, the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Department of Health and Human Services. The New York Times wrote that his work is “likely to force a rethinking of some conventional wisdom about health care”.
Cooper received his undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago and his PhD from the London School of Economics, where he received the Richard Titmuss prize for Best PhD thesis. He was an Economic and Social Science Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow in economics at the LSE’s Centre for Economic Performance, where he remains a faculty associate.
Maya Rockeymoore Cummings is founder, president, and CEO of Global Policy Solutions, a certified B Corporation and mission driven strategy firm, dedicated to helping community-based, philanthropic, academic, governmental, and corporate organizations achieve strategic objectives. The firm specializes in coalition building, public policy analysis and research, program development, project management, and government relations.
A noted speaker and author, Rockeymoore Cummings' areas of expertise include health, social insurance, economic security, education, technology, women’s issues and youth civic participation. She is the author of The Political Action Handbook: A How to Guide for the Hip-Hop Generation and co-editor of Strengthening Community: Social Insurance in a Diverse America among many other articles and chapters. Her frequent speaking engagements have included invitations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Economic Policy Institute, U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives, Congressional Progressive Caucus, Drexel University, Women Donors Network, National Association of Black Journalists, and Grantmakers in Aging among many other organizations. She has been quoted extensively in publications such as the Washington Post and New York Times and has appeared on MSNBC, CNN, and C-SPAN among other news outlets.
Rockeymoore Cummings previously served as the chair of the Maryland Democratic Party, Vice President of Research and Programs at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, Senior Resident Scholar at the National Urban League, Chief of Staff to former Congressman Charles Rangel, Professional Staff on the House Ways and Means Committee, and as a CBCF Legislative Fellow in the office of former Congressman Melvin Watt among other positions.
Elizabeth Docteur is an independent consultant with 25 years of experience working to inform health policy decision-making through positions in the U.S. government, the international arena, and civil society. Docteur is a former vice president of the Center for Studying Health System Change, a research group that used qualitative methods, including longitudinal analysis of selected local markets, to track developments in financing and delivery of health care. She also served as deputy chief of the health division at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), where she led work to study the effectiveness and efficiency of health systems internationally. She has held positions in both the legislative and executive branches of the U.S. government, including with President Clinton's Advisory Commission on Consumer Protection and Quality in Health Care, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, and the Physician Payment Review Commission. She also served as the director of health policy at the National Academy of Social Insurance. Docteur holds a master’s degree in public policy analysis and a bachelor’s degree in political science and history, magna cum laude, from the University of Rochester.
Christine Eibner is the Paul O'Neill Alcoa Chair in Policy Analysis; director, Payment, Cost, and Coverage Program; and a senior economist at the RAND Corporation. She is director of RAND COMPARE, a project that uses economic modeling to predict how individuals and employers will respond to major health care policy changes. She is also a professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. Eibner's research focuses on the effect of health insurance regulations and reforms, including the Affordable Care Act. She is also leading an evaluation of CMS's Medicare Advantage Value-Based Insurance Design model test. Eibner earned her bachelor's degree in English and economics from the College of William and Mary and her doctorate in economics from the University of Maryland, College Park.
Matthew Fiedler is a fellow with the USC-Brookings Schaeffer Initiative for Health Policy. His research examines a range of topics in health care economics and health care policy. Prior to joining the Brookings Institution in January 2017, Fiedler served as Chief Economist of the Council of Economic Advisers, where he oversaw the Council's work on health care policy, including implementation of the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance expansions and health care delivery system reforms. Fiedler currently serves on a technical review panel for the Congressional Budget Office’s health insurance simulation model. Fiedler holds a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University and a B.A. in mathematics and economics from Swarthmore College.
Tara O'Neill Hayes is the Director of Human Welfare Policy at American Action Forum (AAF). Hayes' research focuses on federal policy related to individuals’ health and economic wellbeing. Her portfolio includes such areas as nutrition assistance and childcare programs, senior services, anti-homelessness and self-sufficiency initiatives, and other poverty–alleviation programs. Hayes formerly served as AAF’s Deputy Director of Health Care Policy.
Hayes has spoken at numerous briefings and policy events. Her research and insights have appeared in numerous media outlets, including The Washington Post, Forbes, Politico, and Kaiser Health News.
Before joining AAF, Hayes worked as a Legislative Assistant in the U.S. House of Representatives for various members from her home state of South Carolina, covering a broad portfolio of issues. She earned her master’s in public policy and management from Carnegie Mellon University. In 2014, she was named a David Winston Health Policy Scholar. She was elected to the National Academy of Social Insurance in 2019.
John Holahan is an Institute fellow in the Health Policy Center at Urban, where he previously served as center director for over 30 years. His recent work focuses on health reform, the uninsured, and health expenditure growth, developing proposals for health system reform most recently in Massachusetts. He examines the coverage, costs, and economic impact of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), including the costs of Medicaid expansion as well as the macroeconomic effects of the law. He has also analyzed the health status of Medicaid and exchange enrollees, and the implications for costs and exchange premiums. Holahan has written on competition in insurer and provider markets and implications for premiums and government subsidy costs as well as on the cost-containment provisions of the ACA.
Holahan has conducted significant work on Medicaid and Medicare reform, including analyses on the recent growth in Medicaid expenditures, implications of block grants and swap proposals on states and the federal government, and the effect of state decisions to expand Medicaid in the ACA on federal and state spending. Recent work on Medicare includes a paper on reforms that could both reduce budgetary impacts and improve the structure of the program. His work on the uninsured explores reasons for the growth in the uninsured over time and the effects of proposals to expand health insurance coverage on the number of uninsured and the cost to federal and state governments.
Chris Jennings is the Founder and President of Jennings Policy Strategies (JPS), a nationally respected health care consulting firm. Chris Jennings is an over three decades-long health policy veteran of the White House, the Congress and the private sector. In 2014, he departed from his second tour of duty in the White House where he served President Obama as Deputy Assistant to the President for Health Policy and Coordinator of Health Reform. He served in a similar capacity in the Clinton White House for nearly eight years.
From his positions in the executive branch, Jennings has helped implement the Affordable Care Act’s access and delivery reform provisions (for President Obama) as well as played leadership roles in the development, passage and implementation of bipartisan health reforms, such as the Children’s Health Insurance Program, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA) of 1997 and major Medicare reforms in the Balanced Budget Act (BBA) of 1997 (for President Clinton).
In his decade of service in the U.S. Senate, he served as the Deputy Director of the Special Committee on Aging for three Senators (Glenn, Pryor, and Melcher) and led major reform efforts in the areas of long-term care, prescription drug coverage/cost containment, and rural health care. In this capacity, he also served in a major role for the U.S. Bipartisan Commission on Comprehensive Health Care (also known as the “Pepper Commission”).
Outside of government service, Jennings has been a senior health policy advisor to seven Presidential campaigns, the 2008 and 2016 Democratic Platform Drafting Committees, and multiple gubernatorial and Senate candidates. Recognizing his pragmatic nature and experience with key Democratic policymakers, the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) sought Chris to serve as a senior advisor on a number of health reform projects, including reports and recommendations on access, delivery reforms, cost containment, and long-term care.
Chip Kahn is President and CEO of the Federation of American Hospitals (FAH). His extensive health policy expertise, outstanding leadership abilities, lengthy Capitol Hill experience, and proven campaign and communications skills make him one of Washington, DC’s most effective and accomplished trade association executives. He is one of only six health care leaders who have appeared on Modern Healthcare magazine’s annual “100 Most Influential People in Healthcare” list (formerly the “100 Most Powerful People in Healthcare” list) since its inception. Kahn is currently at the forefront of national initiatives to shape policy for advancing health care quality and information technology. He represents the FAH as a member of the Measure Applications Partnership (MAP) Coordinating Committee of the National Quality Forum (NQF), a multi-stakeholder private-public partnership for developing and implementing a national strategy for health care quality measurement. He is also a former member of the NQF’s Governing Board. Kahn is the recipient of the B’nai B’rith 2016 National Health Care Award, which has recognized exceptional trailblazers in the health care industry for more than 30 years.
Katie Keith provides “Following the ACA” rapid response analysis for the Health Affairs Blog. She is a principal at Keith Policy Solutions, LLC, where she advises nonprofits and foundations on health care issues and conducts original legal, policy, and qualitative analysis to support policy goals. Her work includes an emphasis on implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and its impact on underserved populations, such as the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. Keith is a co-founder and steering committee member of Out2Enroll, a national initiative to connect LGBT people with coverage options under the ACA. She is also an appointed consumer representative to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners and an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center where she teaches courses on the ACA and LGBT health law and policy. Keith maintains a part-time appointment at Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms and serves as a scholar with the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law. She is a former research professor at Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms where she specialized in state and federal implementation of the ACA and wrote widely on topics that include the health insurance Marketplaces, enforcement, and nondiscrimination. Keith received her law degree from the Georgetown University Law Center and holds a Master’s in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University.
Renée M. Landers is professor of law at Suffolk University Law School and teaches administrative law, constitutional law, and health law. She is the Faculty Director of the school’s Health and Biomedical Law Concentration. President of the Boston Bar Association in 2003-2004, she was the first woman of color and the first law professor to serve in that position. She has worked in private practice and served as Deputy General Counsel for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Policy Development at the U.S. Department of Justice during the Clinton Administration. Landers has been a member of various boards and commissions including, the Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice of the American Bar Association, the National Academy of Social Insurance, Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts, and the Massachusetts Commission on Judicial Conduct. She served on the task force that drafted the revised Code of Judicial Conduct effective in 2016. Currently, she is a member of the Committee on Judicial Ethics. Previously, she was a member of the Supreme Judicial Court’s committees studying gender bias and racial and ethnic bias in the courts. The focus of Landers’ work has been on health care regulation, gender, and racial and ethnic bias in the legal system. She is the author of an articles on the potential for Massachusetts health care reform initiatives to eliminate racial and ethnic disparities in health care and aspects of the Affordable Care Act including the impact of the Medicaid expansion. She is a regular commentator on legal developments in constitutional law, health law, and administrative law for media organizations. Landers is a graduate of Radcliffe College of Harvard University and Boston College Law School.
Lauren LeRoy is a strategic adviser to foundations, nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and academia on health and policy issues. Current professional interests include advice on organizational positioning and strategy, policy analytics and strategy, executive coaching and professional mentoring, and facilitation of meetings and forums. She was previously president and CEO of Grantmakers In Health; executive director of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, a nonpartisan congressional advisory body; executive director of the Physician Payment Review Commission; associate director of The Commonwealth Fund Commission on Elderly People Living Alone; assistant director of the UCSF Institute for Health Policy Studies; and health analyst in the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Research interests and published works include Medicare reform, the health workforce, health and aging, health system reform, and the work of health philanthropy in improving people’s health, access to care, and health equity. She is a Member of the National Academy of Social Insurance; fellow of the National Academies; chair of several Institute of Medicine study committees; member of the dean's policy advisory council at the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health; chair of the National Advisory Council of the California Health Benefits Review Program; and senior fellow at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. LeRoy holds a doctorate in social policy planning from the University of California, Berkeley.
Maya MacGuineas is the president of the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Her areas of expertise include budget, tax, and economic policy. As a leading budget expert for the past twenty years and a political independent, she has worked closely with members of both parties and serves as a trusted resource on Capitol Hill. MacGuineas testifies regularly before Congress and has published broadly, including regularly in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Atlantic, and numerous other outlets. She also appears regularly as a commentator on television.
MacGuineas oversees a number of the Committee’s projects including the grassroots coalition Fix the Debt; the Committee’s Fiscal Institute; and FixUS, a project seeking to better understand the root causes of our nation’s growing divisions and deteriorating political system, and to work with others to bring attention to these issues and the need to fix them. Her most recent area of focus is on the future of the economy, technology, and capitalism.
Gwendolyn Roberts Majette is an Associate Professor of Law at the Center for Health Law and Policy at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. Majette received her undergraduate degree from Emory University, her J.D. from George Washington University School of Law, and her LL.M. in Global Health Law, with distinction from Georgetown University Law Center. Majette’s scholarship focuses on patients' rights, delivery system reform, health disparities, global health, and health care reform. She has been called upon by the United States Commission for Civil Rights, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the World Health Organization, and is cited in one of the leading health law texts. She has also been quoted in the national media and appeared as a legal expert on local newscasts regarding health care reform.
Majette has diverse experience working on health care and delivery system reform matters as an expert advisor to the Co-Chair of the Massachusetts Provider Price Variation Commission, as a member of the executive team for a state-based exchange, and as a legislative fellow working on Medicare, Medicaid, and Health Care Reform policy with the United States Congress.
Mark Miller is executive vice president of health care at Arnold Ventures where he works to lower the cost and improve the value of health care. He joins the team with more than 30 years of experience developing and implementing health policy, including prior positions as the executive director of Medicare Payment Advisory Commission; assistant director of Health and Human Resources at the Congressional Budget Office; deputy director of health plans at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services; health financing branch chief at the Office of Management and Budget; and senior research associate at the Urban Institute.
Miller has extensive experience identifying emerging health care issues, developing policy solutions, working with policymakers, and engaging diverse stakeholders. Over the course of his career, he has been directly involved in the development of major health legislation such as the Balanced Budget Act; the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act; and the Affordable Care Act. Miller holds a Ph.D. in public policy analysis from the State University of New York at Binghamton and an M.A. and B.A. in political science from Old Dominion University.
Marilyn Moon 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 the American Institutes for Research (AIR) and from 2013 to 2018 she directed the Center on Aging at AIR. A nationally-known economist and expert on Medicare, aging, consumer health issues, and health care financing, Moon 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 written extensively on health policy and other social insurance issues; she wrote a column on health reform for the Washington Post in the 1990s. She has served on a number of boards for non-profit organizations, including the Medicare Rights Center, the National Academy of Social Insurance and the Holy Cross Health System. She 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.
Tricia Neuman is senior vice president of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and director of the Foundation’s Program on Medicare Policy. There she oversees the Foundation’s policy analysis and research pertaining to Medicare, and health coverage and care for aging Americans and people with disabilities. A widely cited Medicare policy expert, Neuman focuses on topics such as the health and economic security of older adults, the role of Medicare Advantage plans, Medicare and out-of-pocket spending trends, prescription drug costs, payment and delivery system reforms, and policy options to strengthen Medicare for the future. She has authored numerous papers pertaining to Medicare, has been invited several times to present expert testimony before Congressional committees, and has appeared and been quoted as an independent expert by major, national media outlets. Before joining the Foundation in 1995, Neuman served on the professional staff of the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health in the U.S. House of Representatives and on the staff of the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging working on health and long-term care issues. Neuman received a doctorate of science degree in health policy and management and a masters of science degree in health finance and management from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. She received her bachelor’s degree from Wesleyan University.
Helaine Olen is an award-winning opinion writer for The Washington Post Opinion section. An expert on money and society with a deep understanding of public policy, she writes, speaks and consults on issues including Social Security, retirement, healthcare, student loans and women’s financial issues.
Olen has appeared on The Daily Show, Frontline, C-Span, the BBC, MSNBC, All Things Considered, Marketplace and more to share her forward-thinking commentary on politics, economics and consumer and regulatory issues. She also speaks to professional, university and think thank audiences about these topics; her talk on the effects of financial inequality for New America Foundation remains one of the think tank’s most-watched videos on YouTube. Author of the bestselling book Pound Foolish: Exposing The Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry and co-author of The Index Card: Why Personal Finance Doesn’t Have to be So Complicated, Olen’s writing has also been published in many publications including The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Nation, and more. Previously, Olen reported on money, business and the economy for Slate, where she originated the highly popular and award-winning “Ask The Bills” advice column.
Named one of Business Insider’s “50 Women Who Are Changing the World” and one of the “Top 30 Most Influential People in Personal Finance and Wealth” by MoneyTips.com, Olen has earned a number of fellowships and grants, including the National Press Foundation’s Retirement Issues Program, Columbia University Age Boom Academy, and the New York Times Company Foundation Fellowship.
Harold Pollack is the Helen Ross Professor at the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago. He is also an affiliate professor in the Biological Sciences Collegiate Division and the Department of Public Health Sciences.
Co-founder of the University of Chicago Crime Lab, he is co-director of the University of Chicago Health Lab. He is a committee member of the Center for Health Administration Studies (CHAS) at the University of Chicago. His current NIH-funded research concerns improved services for individuals at the boundaries of the behavioral health and criminal justice systems, disabilities, and two major new efforts to address the opioid epidemic in Illinois and across the nation.
Past President of the Health Politics and Policy section of the American Political Science Association, Pollack has been appointed to three committees of the National Academy of Sciences. He received his undergraduate degree, magna cum laude, in electrical engineering and computer science from Princeton University. He holds master's and doctorate degrees in public policy from the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Before coming to SSA, Pollack was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholar in Health Policy Research at Yale University and taught Health Management and Policy at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.
He has published widely at the interface between poverty policy and public health. His research appears in such journals as Addiction, Journal of the American Medical Association, American Journal of Public Health, Health Services Research, Pediatrics, and Social Service Review. His journalism regularly appears in such outlets as Washington Post, the Nation, the New York Times, New Republic, and other popular publications. His American Prospect essay, "Lessons from an Emergency Room Nightmare" was selected for the collection Best American Medical Writing, 2009.
Frederic Riccardi serves as the president of the Medicare Rights Center. As vice president of client services, Riccardi oversaw all of Medicare Rights’ client programming, including its National Consumer Helpline—which handles around 20,000 questions each year—and developed and implemented a variety of successful programs with diverse partners, including two new ombudsman programs for New Yorkers with specific health care needs. For over a decade, he has been a lead Medicare advocate nationally, helping Medicare beneficiaries and families access and afford their care and advising professionals on how to better serve their clients. He has collaborated with an array of stakeholders to help inform federal and state health care policy and is a frequent spokesperson on Medicare issues in major media outlets. Riccardi is also a lecturer at the Columbia University School of Social Work.
Sara Rosenbaum is the Harold and Jane Hirsh Professor of Health Law and Policy and Chair of the Department of Health Policy at the Milken Institute School of Public Health, George Washington University. She also directs the Center for Health Services Research and Policy and the Hirsh Health Law and Policy Program. During 1993 and 1994, Rosenbaum worked for the White House Domestic Policy Council, where she directed the legislative drafting of The Health Security Act for President Clinton. Beginning her career as a legal services attorney, she served on the staff of the Children’s Defense Fund from 1979 to 1992, where she directed the Fund’s Health Division and Department of Programs and Policy. A nationally recognized expert in health insurance, managed care, civil rights and health policy and health care for the poor and underserved, Rosenbaum has authored dozens of books and articles on a wide range of topics and holds positions on numerous boards. A member of the National Academy of Social Insurance since 1994, Rosenbaum received her law degree from Boston University School of Law.
Elisabeth Rosenthal, MD is the Editor-in-Chief at Kaiser Health News (KHN). She joined KHN in September 2016 after 22 years as a correspondent with The New York Times, where she covered a variety of beats from health care to environment and did a stint in the Beijing bureau. While in China, she covered SARS, bird flu and the emergence of HIV/AIDS in rural areas. Rosenthal’s 2013-14 series, “Paying Till It Hurts,” won many prizes for both health reporting and its creative use of digital tools. Her book, An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back (Penguin Random House, 2017), was a New York Times best-seller and a Washington Post notable book of the year. She is a graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Medical School and briefly practiced medicine in a New York City emergency room before converting to journalism.
Allyson Y. Schwartz, a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania who served from 2005-2015, is a nationally recognized health care leader. Throughout her professional life she has worked on issues such as affordability, primary care, coordinated care, and increased access to coverage. Today, Schwartz serves as president and CEO of the Better Medicare Alliance, a research and advocacy organization that engages 460,000 grassroots beneficiary advocates and 143 allied organizations – including health providers, health plans, professional associations and aging service agencies – in support of Medicare Advantage.
A former health service executive, Schwartz was elected to the Pennsylvania State Senate in 1990, serving 14 years until her election to Congress. There, Schwartz was the driving force behind Pennsylvania’s CHIP program, which was a model for the federal CHIP program five years later.
In Congress, Schwartz was appointed to the Ways and Means committee and served as a senior member of the Budget Committee. In both capacities, Schwartz was a strong advocate for Medicare. She was the leader in Congress on physician payment reform to encourage value over volume, supported research, innovation, and use of technology to improve quality, efficiency, and contain costs. Schwartz was instrumental in the passage of landmark health reform legislation, authoring key provisions such as the ban on pre-existing condition exclusions for children and increased access to primary care.
She serves as a member of RAND’s Technical Expert Panel on the Medicare Advantage Stars Rating System and is a member of the CMS Advisory Panel on Outreach and Education. Schwartz is also a member of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Advisory Board, participates in an advisory group for Avalere Health’s Patient-Perspective Value Framework, and served as Co-Chair of the Health and Housing for Seniors Task Force of the Bipartisan Policy Center. Locally, she is a member of the Advisory Board for the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School “Penn Wharton Budget Model”. Schwartz earned a B.A. from Simmons College, and a Master of Social Service from Bryn Mawr College.
Paul Starr is professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University and Stuart Professor of communications and public affairs at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School. He also serves as co-editor of The American Prospect, a liberal magazine that he co-founded in 1990 with Robert Kuttner and Robert Reich.
Starr's work addresses a wide range of questions in politics, public policy, and social theory. Within sociology, his current interests include institutional analysis, political sociology, and the sociology of knowledge, technology, and information, especially as they bear on democracy, equality, and freedom. During 1993 he served as a senior health policy advisor at the White House.
Starr has written three books about health care institutions and policies. The Social Transformation of American Medicine (1983) won the Bancroft Prize (American History), C. Wright Mills Award (Sociology), and Pulitzer Prize (General Nonfiction). The Logic of Health Care Reform (1992) laid out the case for a system of universal health insurance provided through a choice of private plans in what are now called insurance exchanges. His most recent book on health-care history and politics is Remedy and Reaction: The Peculiar American Struggle over Health-Care Reform (2011, revised ed. 2013).
Starr has also written extensively on media, the public, and liberalism. His 2004 book The Creation of the Media: Political Origins of Modern Communications received the Goldsmith Book Prize. Freedom's Power (2007) is an account of both the philosophical and institutional development of liberalism from its classical to modern phases. He is currently working on a project on the entrenchment of power, law, and social structure, as well as a book about unanticipated changes in the development of post-industrial societies.
Michael Thompson is the president and CEO of the National Alliance of Healthcare Purchaser Coalitions (National Alliance), the only nonprofit, purchaser-led organization with a national and regional structure dedicated to driving health and healthcare value across the country.
Prior to joining the National Alliance, Thompson was a Principal at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) for 20 years. He is a nationally recognized thought leader for business health strategies and health system reform. Thompson has worked with major employers and other stakeholders on sustainable cost reduction, integrated health, wellness and consumerism, retiree health, private health exchanges and health reform. Known for developing and promoting collaborative cross-sector health industry initiatives, Thompson participated on the steering board of the World Economic Forum’s “Working toward Wellness” initiative and co-founded the Private Exchange Evaluation Collaborative (PEEC). Prior to PwC, Thompson served as an executive with diverse roles with Prudential Healthcare for over 17 years.
Thompson is a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries, serving on the Health Practice Council, and chairs the Medicare Sub-Committee of the American Academy of Actuaries (AAA). He is also widely recognized as a leading national advocate for mental health and wellbeing and was past president of the New York City chapter of the National Alliance for Mental Illness (NAMI). Thompson was an active member of the board of the Northeast Business Group on Health for 11 years.
Cori Uccello an actuary and the senior health fellow at the American Academy of Actuaries. She serves as the actuarial profession’s chief public policy liaison on health issues. In this role, she promotes the formulation of sound health policy by providing nonpartisan technical assistance to federal and state policymakers and regulators. Uccello helped lead the Academy’s efforts to provide guidance to federal and state regulators regarding the implementation of various provisions in the Affordable Care Act (ACA), including those related to coverage and market reforms, actuarial value, and risk-sharing mechanisms. Her current work focuses on examining the implications of alternative coverage approaches and proposals to stabilize the market. She served two terms as a commissioner on the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), was a member of the 2010-2011 Technical Review Panel of the Medicare Trustees Report, and currently serves as a member of CBO’s panel of health advisors and on the technical review panel for CBO’s Health Insurance Simulation Model. She is a graduate of Boston College and received a master’s degree in public policy from Georgetown University.
Rodney Whitlock is the Vice President of McDermott+ Consulting. While working in Congress, Rodney served as former US Representative Charlie Norwood’s (R-GA) health policy director where he managed the Patients’ Bill of Rights (S.1890), among other notable health policy matters. Whitlock then went on to serve Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) in the Senate. He first joined the Senate Finance Committee Staff as a health policy advisor to Chairman Grassley, and ultimately joined the Senator’s personal office as health policy director. During his time in the Senate, Whitlock served as the lead Republican staffer for Medicaid legislation from 2005 to 2010, and continued to serve Senator Grassley on all health-related issues through 2015. During his time in the Senate, Rodney helped staff Republicans in the Senate on such prominent and important legislation as the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006, CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2007 and 2009 and Affordable Care Act of 2010.
Whitlock received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Georgia. For the last 20 years, Whitlock has been an adjunct faculty member at the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health’s Department of Health Policy and Management, and the Graduate School of Political Management’s Department of Legislative Affairs. Hundreds of students have taken his courses and have gone on to pursue careers in Washington, DC.
Stephen Zuckerman is a senior fellow and vice president for health policy at the Urban Institute. He has studied health economics and health policy for 30 years and is a national expert on Medicare and Medicaid physician payment, including how payments affect enrollee access to care and the volume of services they receive. He is currently examining how payment and delivery system reforms can affect the availability of primary care services and studying the implementation and impact of the Affordable Care Act.
Zuckerman has published extensively on many topics, including the determinants of geographic differences in Medicare spending, Medicaid managed care, state coverage expansions for adults, changes in Medicare benefit design that could protect the most vulnerable beneficiaries, hospital rate setting, and the impact of undocumented immigrants on the US health care system. Other issues he has worked on include Medicaid financing arrangements used by states, crowd-out of private coverage by SCHIP, the health care safety net, and survey approaches for measuring insurance coverage. Zuckerman also codirected the development of the Geographic Practice Cost Indices used in the Medicare physician fee schedule. Before joining Urban, Zuckerman worked at the American Medical Association’s Center for Health Policy Research. He received his PhD in economics from Columbia University.
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Slides from the conference program are available for download. Not all speakers used slides. Please contact Meghan Griffin, mgriffin@nasi.org, with questions.
Panel 1: The Current Health Care Reform Landscape Panel 2: Medicare as a Platform for Expanding Affordable Coverage Panel 3: Leveraging Medicare to Control Health Care Spending Luncheon Keynote: Elisabeth Rosenthal
Panel 4: Financing Medicare Expansion Proposals
Panel 1: The Current Health Care Reform Landscape Panel 2: Medicare as a Platform for Expanding Affordable Coverage Panel 3: Leveraging Medicare to Control Health Care Spending Luncheon Keynote: Elisabeth Rosenthal
Panel 4: Financing Medicare Expansion Proposals
- John Holahan
- Maya MacGuineas (presented by Marc Goldwein)
Opening Panel: Katie Keith, Rodney Whitlock, Chris Jennings
Panel 1 (L-R): Marilyn Moon, Cori Uccello, Sara Collins, Mark Miller, Paul Starr
Panel 2 (L-R): Lauren LeRoy, Gwendolyn Majette, Harold Pollack, Maya Rockeymoore Cummings
Panel 3 (L-R): Elizabeth Docteur, Gerard Anderson, Bob Berenson, Zack Cooper
Breakout Panel: Public Option (L-R): Stephen Zuckerman, Melinda Buntin, Tricia Neuman, Christina Eibner, Matthew Fiedler
Breakout Panel: Incremental Changes: Cristina Boccuti, Sheila Burke
Breakout Panel: Medicare-for-all: Renée Landers, Allyson Schwartz, Chip Kahn
Panel 4 (L-R): Helaine Olen, Marc Goldwein, Katherine Baicker, John Holahan
Participants came from over 100 organizations across the country, including:
- Advisory Board
- AFL-CIO
- AFSCME
- American Academy of Actuaries
- American Action Forum
- American Council of Life Insurers
- American Institutes for Research
- Arnold & Porter LLP
- Arnold Ventures
- Avalere Health
- Basic Income NYC
- Better Medicare Alliance
- Bipartisan Policy Center
- Blue Cross Blue Shield Association
- Brookings Institution
- Buffin Foundation
- California State Compensation Insurance Fund
- CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield
- Caring Across Generations
- Case Western Reserve University
- Center for American Progress
- Center for Medicare Advocacy
- Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
- Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services
- Cleveland State University
- CNN
- Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget
- Commonwealth Fund
- Commonwealth of Massachusetts
- Congressional Budget Office
- Credit Builders Alliance
- Economic Policy Institute
- Federation of American Hospitals
- George Washington University
- Georgetown University
- Gerontological Society of America
- Grantmakers In Health
- Health Policy Alternatives
- Heritage Foundation
- Hill+Knowlton Strategies
- Hospital IQ
- Howard University
- Jewish Federations of North America
- Jewish Federations of North America
- Johns Hopkins University
- Kaiser Family Foundation
- Kaiser Health News
- Long-Term Quality Alliance
- Magellan Health
- Maine AllCare
- Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP
- Maryland Health Care Commission
- Mathematica
- Medicare Rights Center
- National Alliance of Healthcare Purchaser Coalitions
- National Coalition on Health Care
- National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare
- National Institute on Retirement Security
- National Women's Law Center
- New York University
- Office of Management and Budget
- Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation
- Peter G. Peterson Foundation
- Princeton University
- Project On Goverment Oversight
- RAND Corporation
- Rapid Learning Project
- Reuters
- Roosevelt Institute
- RTI
- Segal Group
- SEIU
- Social Security Advisory Board
- Social Security Works
- Suffolk University Law School
- Teamsters
- U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
- U.S. Department of Labor
- U.S. Senate Committee on the Budget
- U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging
- UC Berkeley Labor Center
- University of California - Berkeley
- University of Chicago
- University of Delaware
- University of Maryland School of Public Health
- University of Massachusetts
- University of Minnesota
- University of Wisconsin-Madison
- Urban Institute
- Vanderbilt University School of Medicine
- Washington Post
- Washington University in St. Louis
- Webster University
- West Health Policy Center
- WISER
- Wynne Health Group
- Yale University