Health Care Experts

Gerard Anderson

P: 410-955-3241
F: 410-955-2301

Gerard Anderson, Ph.D. is a professor of health policy and management and professor of international health at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Hospital Finance and Management, and co-director of the Johns Hopkins Program for Medical Technology and Practice Assessment. He recently stepped down as the National Program Director for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation sponsored program “Partnership for Solutions: Better Lives for People with Chronic Conditions.”

Dr. Anderson is currently conducting research on 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 200 peer reviewed articles, testified in Congress over 35 times as an individual witness, and serves on multiple editorial committees.
Prior to his arrival at Johns Hopkins, Dr. 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.

Diane Archer

755 West End Avenue
New York, NY 10025
P: 212-866-0908

Diane Archer, an attorney and health care authority, is Special Counsel and Co-Director of the Health Care for All Project at the Institute for America’s Future. With Roger Hickey, she is co-leading a national effort to discuss and debate progressive solutions to the challenge of providing quality, affordable health care to everyone in America. Ms. Archer is the past president of the Medicare Rights Center (MRC), a national consumer service organization dedicated to ensuring that older and disabled Americans get the health care they need, which she founded in 1989 and on whose Board she served until December 2007. Ms. Archer holds a B.A. in Philosophy from Wellesley College and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.

Valerie Arkoosh, MD, MPH

P: 215.694.0885

Dr. Valerie Arkoosh is the President-elect of the National Physicians Alliance, a multispecialty physician organization founded as a professional home for physicians to focus on the core values of service, integrity and advocacy with a patient-centered view. She is currently a member of the Board’s Executive Committee and chairs the organization’s Secure Health Care For All Campaign, which seeks to guarantee high quality, affordable health care for all.

Dr. Arkoosh holds the Master of Pubic Health degree, with a concentration in Health Policy, from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her policy study has focused on ways to provide access to health care for uninsured Americans with a particular emphasis on the impact of comprehensive state-based health care reform efforts. Dr. Arkoosh received the Doctor of Medicine from the University of Nebraska College of Medicine and a B.A. in economics from Northwestern University.

Dr. Arkoosh is Professor of Clinical Anesthesiology and Clinical Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Dr. Arkoosh’s medical practice has centered on the care of the obstetric patient during labor and delivery. Her research has focused on drugs and devices using the spinal route of administration to produce labor analgesia. Dr. Arkoosh is an examiner for the American Board of Anesthesiology and an elected member of the Association of University Anesthesiologists. She has won several resident teaching awards. Dr. Arkoosh has served as President of the Society for Obstetric Anesthesia and Perinatology (SOAP), an organization focused on the provision of optimal care to women during labor and delivery. Prior to joining the University of Pennsylvania, she was Chairman of the Department of Anesthesiology at Drexel University College of Medicine.

Dr. Arkoosh also has an avid interest in improving maternal and infant health in developing countries. She has participated in three medical missions to Kenya with Operation Smile and facilitated the development of SOAP’s International Outreach Program.

Dean Baker

1611 Connecticut Avenue, NW,
Suite 400
Washington, DC 20009
P: 202-293-5380 x114
F: 202-588-1356

Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. He previously worked as a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute and an assistant professor at Bucknell University. His blog, Beat the Press, features commentary on economic reporting. He received his Ph.D in economics from the University of Michigan.

He has written numerous books and articles, including Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy, Polipoint Press, 2009; The United States Since 1980, Cambridge University Press, March 2007; The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer, Center for Economic and Policy Research, 2006; Social Security: The Phony Crisis (with Mark Weisbrot), University of Chicago Press, 1999; "Asset Returns and Economic Growth," (with Brad DeLong and Paul Krugman), Brookings Papers on Economic Activity (2005); "Financing Drug Research: What Are the Issues," Center for Economic and Policy Research, 2004; "Medicare Choice Plus: The Solution to the Long-Term Deficit Problem," Center for Economic and Policy Research, 2004; The Benefits of Full Employment (with Jared Bernstein), Economic Policy Institute, 2004; "Professional Protectionists: The Gains >From Free Trade in Highly Paid Professional Services," Center for Economic and Policy Research, 2003; "The Run-Up in Home Prices: Is It Real or Is It Another Bubble," Center for Economic and Policy Research, 2002.

His book Getting Prices Right: The Battle Over the Consumer Price Index (M.E. Sharpe, 1997) was a winner of a Choice Book Award as one of the outstanding academic books of the year. He was also the author of the weekly online commentary on economic reporting, the Economic Reporting Review (ERR), from 1996 - 2006. He has worked as a consultant for the World Bank, the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress, and the OECD's Trade Union Advisory Council. His columns have appeared in many major media outlets including the Atlantic Monthly, the Washington Post, and the London Financial Times. He is frequently cited in economics reporting in major media outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, CNBC and National Public Radio.

David Balto

P: 202-789-5424

David Balto is a Senior Fellow at American Progress focusing on competition policy, intellectual property law, and health care. He has over 20 years of experience as an antitrust attorney in the private sector, the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, and the Federal Trade Commission. He is nationally known for his expertise in competition policy in high tech industries, semiconductors, health care, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, media, and financial services. He regularly provides advice on mergers, strategic alliances, and joint ventures.

From 1995-2001 he was the policy director of the Bureau of Competition of the Federal Trade Commission and attorney advisor to Chairman Robert Pitofsky. In these leadership roles Mr. Balto was a senior advisor in developing competition policy and identifying key enforcement initiatives. He helped draft guidelines involving intellectual property, joint ventures, and health care. He played a key role in several litigated cases, including the challenges to the Staples/Office Depot and Heinz/Beechnut mergers, the Intel monopolization case, and the challenges to anticompetitive conduct by several pharmaceutical companies. He is the only person to twice win the FTC’s award for outstanding scholarship and won the FTC's award for distinguished service, the highest award given a staff attorney.

Mr. Balto has authored more than 60 articles about competition policy focusing on intellectual property, health care, pharmaceuticals, financial services, and mergers. He regularly testifies before Congress, state legislatures, the FTC, and DOJ. He has authored numerous amicus briefs for consumer groups in seminal antitrust cases.

Robert A. Berenson, M.D.

2100 M Street, NW
Washington, DC 20037
P: 202-833-7200

Robert Berenson, M.D., is a Senior Fellow at the Urban Institute. He is an expert in health care policy, particularly Medicare, with experience practicing medicine, serving in senior positions in two Administrations, and helping organize and manage a successful preferred provider organization.

From 1998 to 2000, he was in charge of Medicare payment policy and managed care contracting in the Health Care Financing Administration (now the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services). In the Carter Administration, he served as an Assistant Director of the Domestic Policy Staff. Dr. Berenson is a board-certified internist who practiced for 12 years in a Washington, D.C., group practice and is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians.

Dr. Berenson is also adjunct professor at the University of North Carolina School of Public Health and the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. He is co-author, with Walter Zelman, of The Managed Care Blues & How to Cure Them, published in 1998. Dr. Berenson's current research focuses on modernization of the Medicare program to improve efficiency and the quality of care provided to beneficiaries.

Linda Bergthold

P: 831-462-1334
3552 Paul Sweet Road
Santa Cruz, CA 95065

Dr. Bergthold specializes in medical necessity and evidence-based coverage decision-making. She serves as a national consumer representative on the Medicare Coverage Advisory Committee and previously (from 2000 to 2004) led research at the Stanford University Center for Health Policy on a national study of medical necessity and coverage decision-making in managed care. She is currently an independent health policy consultant and researcher.

Josh Bivens

P: 202-755-8810
1333 H Street, NW
Suite 300, East Tower
Washington, DC 20005-4707

Josh Bivens joined the Economic Policy Institute in 2002. He is the author of Everybody Wins Except for Most of Us: What Economics Teaches About Globalization and has published numerous articles in both academic and popular venues, including USA Today, The Guardian, The American Prospect, Challenge Magazine, and Worth. He is a frequent commentator on economic issues for a variety of media outlets, including NPR, CNN, CNBC, Reuters and the BBC.

Areas of expertise
Macroeconomics • Globalization • Social Insurance • Public Investment

Education
Ph.D., Economics, New School for Social Research
B.A., Economics, University of Maryland at College Park

Sam Blair

P: 603-831-1835

Sam Blair directs the national Main Street Alliance, a network of small business coalitions in ten states across the country working to build a new voice for small businesses on health care. The Alliance works with local small business owners to get their voices heard in the debate over health reform. Alliance partners share a vision of health care that works for small businesses, our employees, and the communities we serve.

Linda J. Blumberg

P: 202-261-5769

Dr. Blumberg is an economist and senior fellow in The Urban Institute’s Health Policy Center. She is an expert on private health insurance, health care financing, and health system reform. Her recent work includes: an analysis of the potential roles of insurance exchanges under reform; development of policy options to expand insurance coverage in New York state and estimation of their cost and coverage implications; an analysis of the cost issues under Massachusetts’ health care reform; an analysis of the potential for public plan options to reduce costs under reform; and an analysis of public health insurance buy-in programs for children. She has analyzed standards of affordability for insurance coverage; led a study of health insurance issues of workers with disabilities; developed a roadmap to universal coverage in the state of Massachusetts; and developed options for expanding insurance coverage to high cost/high risk individuals. For most of 2006 she was in New Zealand as an Ian Axford Fellow in Public Policy, where she studied the effect of having private health insurance on the use of public health services in New Zealand. She is also currently working on analyses of the rate of undiagnosed illnesses among the uninsured and strategies for financing health care reform.

E. Richard Brown

E. Richard Brown, Ph.D., is the director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research; he is also a professor in the Department of Health Services and the Department of Community Health Sciences in the UCLA School of Public Health. Brown founded the Center in 1994. It has since become one of the nation's leading health policy research centers and the premier source of health policy information and analysis on California's population. The Center conducts research on a wide range of health issues and provides extensive public service to policy makers, advocates and the media.

Brown's research and publications focus on health insurance coverage, the lack of coverage and the effects on access of public policies and economic and market conditions. His work and other studies by the Center's researchers have been used by California's governors, legislative leaders and advocates in crafting health care legislation, policies and programs.

Brown is the principal investigator for the California Health Interview Survey (CHIS), the nation's largest state health survey. CHIS provides statewide and local-level estimates for California's diverse population and covers a broad range of health topics, including health status and conditions, health disparities, health insurance and access to health care.

Brown also has been extensively involved in the analysis and development of public policies, with particular emphasis on national health care reform. He has served as a senior health policy advisor to the Barack Obama for President Campaign, as health policy advisor to three members of the United States Senate and as a full-time senior consultant to the President's Task Force on National Health Care Reform. Brown is a past president of the American Public Health Association. He received his Ph.D. in sociology of education from the University of California, Berkeley.

Lisa Dubay

P: 410-502-0985
F: 410-614-9152

Lisa Dubay, Ph.D., Sc. M is a health services researcher with over 20 years of experience in public health. Dr. Dubay recently joined the faculty at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Prior to this she was a Principal Research Associate at the Urban Institute where she focused on the effects of public policies on insurance coverage, access to care, and health outcomes for low-income populations.

Dr. Dubay has led numerous national evaluations of public expansions in coverage for federal agencies and private foundations. Her dissertation examined socio-economic gradients and racial disparities in children’s health status and well being and their emotional and cognitive functioning. Dr. Dubay has extensive experience analyzing nationally representative household surveys.

Elise Gould

P: 202-755-8810
1333 H Street, NW
Suite 300, East Tower
Washington, DC 20005-4707

Elise Gould joined the Economic Policy Institute in September 2003. Her research areas include employer-sponsored health insurance, the employer tax exclusion, the burden of health costs, income inequality and health, and retiree coverage. She has authored a chapter on health in The State of Working America 2008/09, co-authored a book on health insurance coverage in retirement, published in venues such as The Chronicle of Higher Education, Challenge Magazine, and Tax Notes, and academic journals including Health Economics, Journal of Aging and Social Policy, Risk Management & Insurance Review, and International Journal of Health Services. She has been quoted by a variety of news sources including Bloomberg , NPR, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal, and her opinions have appeared on the op-ed pages of USA Today and the Detroit News. She holds a Masters in Public Affairs from the University of Texas and a PhD in economics from the University of Wisconsin.

Thomas L. Greaney

A nationally recognized expert on health care law, Thomas Greaney has spent the last two decades examining the evolution of the health care industry.

"There was a time when health care was dominated by physician interests," says Professor Greaney "We moved to a situation where consumers were supposed to be in control. Now, managed care organizations are calling the shots. We've seen a lot of structural change and a lot of law being developed as prosecutors go after fraud and try to maintain safety nets for consumers."

Being an advocate for consumers goes way back for Professor Greaney. After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1973, he worked as a legislative assistant on Capitol Hill. From 1974-1976, he was a law clerk with the Federal Communications Commission. He was then hired as a senior trial attorney and ultimately as an assistant chief in the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. He spent a decade supervising civil and criminal antitrust litigation involving health care and was involved in policy formulation and legislative matters.

Jacob Hacker

P.O. Box 208209
(77 Prospect Street)
New Haven, Connecticut 06520-8209

Jacob S. Hacker, Ph.D., is the Stanley B. Resor Professor of Political Science at Yale University. Until July 1, he was Professor of Political Science at the University of California at Berkeley, as well as Co-Director of the Center for Health, Economic, and Family Security at Berkeley Law. He is also a Fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C., and a former Junior Fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows.

An expert on the politics of U.S. health and social policy, he is author of The Great Risk Shift: The New Economic Insecurity and the Decline of the American Dream (2006, in paperback January 2008), The Divided Welfare State: The Battle over Public and Private Social Benefits in the United States (2002), and The Road to Nowhere: The Genesis of President Clinton’s Plan for Health Security (1997), co-winner of the Brownlow Book Award of the National Academy of Public Administration. He is also co-author, with Paul Pierson, of Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy (2005) and has edited two volumes—most recently, Health At Risk: America’s Ailing Health System and How to Heal It (2008).

Professor Hacker’s scholarly articles have appeared in such outlets as The American Political Science Review, The British Journal of Political Science, Health Affairs, The New England Journal of Medicine, Perspectives on Politics; Politics & Society, Studies in American Political Development, and The Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law. A frequent media commentator, Hacker has testified before Congress, advised leading politicians, and written popular pieces for the American Prospect, New Republic, Nation, New York Times, New York Times Magazine, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Boston Review, and other publications. He is the author of a 2007 proposal for universal health care, “Health Care for America,” that became a template for several presidential aspirants’ plans, as well as of two recent briefs on how and why to encourage private health insurance to compete with a new public health plan for the nonelderly.

Currently, Professor Hacker is completing a book with Paul Pierson on inequality and American politics, Winner-Take-All Politics. With a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, he is also developing a new index of economic security and overseeing a new public opinion survey on perceptions of economic insecurity in the United States. In addition, he oversees a Social Science Research Council project on the “privatization of risk” and is Vice-President of the National Academy of Social Insurance.

Professor Hacker received his B.A. from Harvard in 1994, and Ph.D. from Yale in 2000.

Roger Hickey

P:202-587-1604

Roger Hickey is Co-Director of the Institute for America’s Future. He was also one of the founders of Health Care for America Now, a coalition of over 1,000 national and local organizations united to achieve quality affordable health care for all. He was also one of the leaders of the successful campaign to stop the privatization of Social Security. Hickey was a founder and Communications Director of the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank that looks at economics from the point of view of working Americans. He was also a founder of the Public Media Center in San Francisco. A graduate of the University of Virginia, Hickey began his career in the 1960s as an organizer for the Virginia Civil Rights Committee.

John Holahan

P: 202-261-5666

John Holahan is the Director of the Health Policy Research Center at The Urban Institute. Much of his research has focused on state health policy, including Medicaid and issues of federalism and health. These include analyses of the recent growth in Medicaid expenditures and the implications of block grants and changes in matching formulas on states.

He has also published on strategies for Medicaid reform. He has developed proposals for health system reform, most recently in Massachusetts. He has also published research on the reasons for the growth in the uninsured over the past decade and on the effects of proposals to expand health insurance coverage on the number of uninsured and the cost to federal and state governments.

Ken Jacobs

P: 510-643-2621
2521 Channing Way #5555
Berkeley, CA 94720

Ken Jacobs is the Chair of the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education, where he focuses on health care coverage, low-wage work and labor standards. Mr. Jacobs served on San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom’s Universal Health Care Council and helped to develop the San Francisco Health Care Security Ordinance. He co-authored several studies on California Health Reform including, “Health Coverage Proposals in California: Impact on Businesses” and “Health Coverage Expansion in California: What Can Consumers Afford to Spend?,” and most recently, “How to Structure a "Play-or-Pay" Requirement on Employers: Lessons from California for National Health Reform,” with Jacob Hacker. Ken is currently providing research and technical assistance to consumer and labor stakeholders and policy makers on health reform in California under a grant from The California Endowment. He has consulted with the San Francisco and San Mateo Departments of Public Health on options for adult health care expansions.

Timothy Jost

P: 540-458-8510
F: 540-458-8488
4008 Sydney Lewis Hall
Lexington, VA 24450

Jost holds the Robert L. Willett Family Professorship of Law at the Washington and Lee University School of Law. He is a co-author of a casebook, Health Law, used widely throughout the United States in teaching health law, and of a treatise and hornbook by the same name. He is also the author of Health Care Coverage Determinations: An International Comparative Study; Disentitlement? The Threats Facing our Public Health Care Programs and a Rights-Based Response; and Readings in Comparative Health Law and Bioethics, the second edition of which appeared this spring.

He has also written numerous articles and book chapters on health care regulation and comparative health law and policy, and has lectured on health law topics throughout the world. His most recent book is Health Care at Risk: A Critique of the Consumer-Driven Movement, which was published by Duke University Press in 2007.

Richard Kirsch

1825 K Street Suite 400
Washington, DC
20006
P: 202-454-6196
F: 928-447-6189

Richard Kirsch is Health Care for America Now’s National Campaign Manager and brings to DC more than 20 years’ experience in health care reform and grassroots organization. As Executive Director of Citizen Action, Kirsch spent 22 years helping lead successful campaigns to establish programs that now provide affordable, comprehensive health coverage to more than 1 million working families in New York. Kirsch is an author of New York's Managed Care Bill of Rights legislation and is also the author of several studies on health care reform including the Managed Care Bill of Rights: A Health Care Policy Guide for Consumer Advocates; the financing of universal health care; health and health system global budgeting; and risk management. In June 1995, Kirsch received the New York Statewide Senior Action Council Human Services Advocacy Award for "his vision, boldness and relentless dedication in pursuit of health care for all," and Kirsch was honored by Families USA in January 2001 as National Health Care Consumer Advocate of the Year.

Gerald F. Kominski, Ph.D.

P: 310-794-2681
F: 310-794-2686
10960 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 1550
Los Angeles, CA 90024

Gerald Kominski, Ph.D., is a Professor of Health Services in the UCLA School of Public Health. He also serves as Director of Health Economics and Evaluation Research (HEER) Program at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. Dr. Kominski teaches classes in research methods, health economics, cost-effectiveness analysis, and health policy. His research focuses on evaluating the costs and cost-effectiveness of health care programs and technologies; improving access and health outcomes among ethnic and vulnerable populations; and developing models for forecasting population health. Dr. Kominski received his Ph.D. in public policy analysis from the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School in 1985. Prior to joining the faculty at UCLA in 1989, he served as a staff member of the agency now known as the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC). He is co-editor of the widely used textbook, Changing the U.S. Health Care System: Key Issues in Health Services Policy and Management, which was published in its 3rd edition in 2007.

Maggie Mahar

P: 202-293-5380 x114
F: 202-483-9430
1333 H Street, NW, 10th Floor
Washington, DC
20005

Maggie Mahar is a fellow at The Century Foundation and the author of Money-Driven Medicine: The Real Reason Health Care Costs So Much (Harper/Collins 2006) and Bull! A History of the Boom, 1982–1999 (Harper/Collins, 2003), a book that Warren Buffett recommended in Berkshire Hathaway's annual report.
Before beginning to specialize in health care, Mahar was a financial journalist. She has written for Institutional Investor, The New York Times, and Barron's, where she served first as senior writer and then as senior editor from the late eighties through the late nineties. There, she covered Wall Street, Washington, and social policy as well as markets and politics in Russia, Japan, and the Middle East. After leaving Barron's, she wrote a column about international markets and economics for Bloomberg.

Before becoming a journalist, Maggie Mahar was an English professor at Yale University, from which she holds a B.A. and a Ph.D. in English literature. She lives in Manhattan where she continues to blog and write about health care.

Ted Marmor

P: 203-432-3238
135 Prospect Street, Box 208200
New Haven, CT
06520

Theodore (Ted) Marmor's scholarship primarily concerns welfare state politics and policy in North America and Western Europe. He particularly emphasizes the major spending programs, which is reflected in the second edition ofThe Politics of Medicare (Aldine de Gruyter, 2000) and the book written with colleagues Mashaw and Harvey in the early l990s, America's Misunderstood Welfare State (Basic Books, l992). The author or co-author of eleven books, Marmor has published over a hundred articles in a wide range of scholarly journals, as well as being a frequent op-ed contributor to U.S. and Canadian newspapers. Ted regularly writes op-ed essays for the Philadelphia Inquirer with long-time Yale law colleague, Jerry Mashaw.

Jim Morone

P: 401-863-1573
F: 401-863-7018
PO Box 1844,
36 Prospect Street
Providence, RI
02912

I received my Ph.D. at the University of Chicago and have taught at University of Chicago, Yale, Brown, and the University of Bremen. My books focus on politics, history, and social policy. I've also written over 100 articles and essays – my recent favorites range from Harry Potter ("”Dumbledore's Wisdom”") to welfare reform (""American Ways of Welfare"") and political culture (Story Book Truths About American) to health care reform (Healthy, Wealthy and Fair). I am a frequent contributor to The American Prospect and the London Review of Books.

I'm also active in policy work and have testified before Congress numerous times – most recently (April, 2006) addressing 45 US Senate Democrats on a health policy vision for the future.

Among my awards, I'm proudest of the three Hazeltine citations for teaching (1993, 1999, 2001), the APSA's Kammerer Award for the Democratic Wish and my Pulitzer nomination (“for Hellfire Nation”)

Vivek H Murthy, MD, MBA

P: 786-245-4550

Vivek H Murthy is an internal medicine physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and an Instructor at Harvard Medical School. He is also the co-founder and President of Doctors for America, a grassroots organization of over 13,000 physicians from all 50 states who are working to pass health reform legislation in 2009. Vivek received his undergraduate degree in Biochemical Sciences from Harvard University, his MD from the Yale School of Medicine, and his MBA from the Yale School of Management. He completed his residency training in Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He is also the co-founder and chairman of Epernicus, LLC a web-based professional networking application for individual researchers and scientific institutions. In the past, Vivek founded VISIONS and the Swasthya Project, international health organizations focused on HIV/AIDS education and women’s health, respectively. His past scientific research has focused on the participation of women and minorities in cancer clinical trials.

Jonathan Oberlander

1101G McGavran-Greenberg, CB 7411
Chapel Hill, NC 27599
P: 919-843-8269
F: 919-966-7499

Jonathan Oberlander is associate professor of Social Medicine and Health Policy and Administration at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. He also holds an adjunct appointment in the Department of Political Science. Dr. Oberlander is author of The Political Life of Medicare (University of Chicago Press, 2003) and is co-editor of a 3-volume series (The Social Medicine Reader, 2nd ed.) published by Duke University Press in 2005. His research interests include Medicare policy, health politics, health care reform both nationally and at the state level, American politics, and public policy. He teaches courses in both the School of Medicine and School of Public Health on health care policy and politics.

Before coming to UNC-Chapel Hill, Dr. Oberlander served as Robert Wood Johnson Visiting Scholar in health policy at the University of California-Berkeley and as a Research Fellow in Governmental Studies at the Brookings Institution. In 2004, he was a Visiting Research Scholar at the Princeton University Center for Health & Wellbeing and during 2008-09 he will be a Visiting Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation. Oberlander holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in political science from Yale University, and a B.A. in political science from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

Frank Pasquale

P: 973-642-8485

Frank Pasquale is a Visiting Professor of Law at Yale Law School where he teaches Intellectual Property and Health Law. He is the Loftus Professor of Law at Seton Hall University School of Law. His expertise and research are in the fields of Health Law and Intellectual Property. A graduate of Yale Law School and Harvard College, Professor Pasquale served as an editor on both the Yale Law and Policy Review and the Yale Symposium on Law and Technology.

Education:
J.D., Yale, 2001
M. Phil., Oxford, 1998
B.A., Harvard, 1996

Harold Pollack

P: 708-275-6841

Harold Pollack is a Professor at the School of Social Service Administration, and faculty chair of the Center for Health Administration Studies. He is also Co-Director of The University of Chicago Crime Lab. He has published widely at the interface between poverty policy and public health. His recent research concerns HIV and hepatitis prevention efforts for injection drug users, drug abuse and dependence among welfare recipients and pregnant women, infant mortality prevention, and child 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.

Professor Pollack has been appointed to two committees of the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine. 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, Professor Pollack was a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy Research at Yale University and taught Health Management and Policy at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.

Karen L. Pollitz

P: 202-687-3003

Karen Pollitz is a Research Professor at the Health Policy Institute at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. There she directs research on health insurance reform issues as they affect consumers and patients. Her areas of focus include regulation of private health insurance plans and markets, managed care consumer protections, and access to affordable health insurance. She is also an adjunct professor in Georgetown's Graduate Public Policy School. Her projects include the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Consumer Guides Project, and the Consumer Healthcare Education Project.

Prior to joining the Institute faculty, Ms. Pollitz served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health Legislation at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from 1993 to 1997. In this capacity she was the Secretary’s legislative liaison on all federal health care issues, including national health care reform, Medicare, Medicaid, and U.S. Public Health Service agencies and programs.

Robert Reich

P: 510-642-0560
F: 510-643-9657
2607 Hearst Avenue 301
Berkeley, CA
94720

Robert B. Reich is Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He has written eleven books, including The Work of Nations, which has been translated into 22 languages; the best-sellers The Future of Success and Locked in the Cabinet, and his most recent book, Supercapitalism. His articles have appeared in the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. Mr. Reich is co-founding editor of The American Prospect magazine. His weekly commentaries on public radio’s "Marketplace" are heard by nearly five million people.

In 2003, Reich was awarded the prestigious Vaclev Havel Foundation Prize, by the former Czech president, for his pioneering work in economic and social thought. In 2005, his play, Public Exposure, broke box office records at its world premiere on Cape Cod.

Mark Schlessinger

P: 203-785-4619
F: 203-785-6287
60 College Street
PO Box 208034
New Haven, CT
06520

Professor Schlesinger's research focuses on three topics. The first explores ways in which the general public and policymakers make sense of and communicate about complex social issues, as well as how they evaluate policies to address those issues. This research examines the determinants of public opinion, the role of political framing, and the importance of norms of fairness in policy assessment. The second set of research examines the impact of ownership on the delivery of health and social services. These studies explore the comparative performance of nonprofit, for-profit and public health care agencies, the nature of public expectations involving ownership, and the extent to which ownership is related to trust in and trustworthiness of medical care. The third set of research examines the attitudinal and behavioral underpinnings of medical consumerism, comparing the effectiveness of exit versus voice to improve medical markets, and identifying the barriers to effective consumer empowerment.

Jean Silver-Isenstadt

P: 703-254-8972
F: 703-620-5873
1902 Association Drive, Suite 200
Reston, VA
20191

Jean Silver-Isenstadt holds a doctorate in the history and sociology of medicine from the University of Pennsylvania, a medical degree from the University of Maryland, and a master’s degree in nonfiction and science writing from the Johns Hopkins University. Her doctoral work focused on 19th-century American health reform. She is the author of Shameless: The Visionary Life of Mary Gove Nichols (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), a biography of the infamous and influential health advocate and social reformer best known for her leadership of the water-cure movement and for her scandalous public lectures to women on anatomy and physiology.

Judith Stein

PO Box 350
Willimantic CT, 06226
P: 860-456-7790
F: 860-456-2614

Judith Stein founded the Center for Medicare Advocacy, Inc. in 1986. She is currently the Executive Director. Ms. Stein has focused on legal representation of the elderly since beginning her legal career in 1975. From 1977 until 1986, Ms. Stein was the Co-Director of Legal Assistance to Medicare Patients (LAMP) where she managed the first Medicare advocacy program in the country. She has extensive experience in developing and administering Medicare advocacy projects, representing Medicare beneficiaries, producing educational materials, teaching and consulting. She has been lead or co-counsel in federal class action and individual cases challenging improper Medicare policies and denials.

Ms. Stein graduated cum laude from Williams College in 1972 and received her law degree with honors from Catholic University School of Law in 1975. She is the editor and co-author of numerous books, articles, and other publications regarding Medicare and related issues including the Medicare Handbook (Aspen Publishers, Inc., updated annually). She is a Past President and Fellow of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys (NAELA), a past Commissioner of the American Bar Association Commission on Law and Aging, an elected member of the National Academy of Social Insurance (NASI), and a recipient of the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA, now CMS) Beneficiary Services Certificate of Merit. She was a delegate to the 2005 White House Conference on Aging, representing Senator Chris Dodd, and received the Connecticut Commission on Aging Agewise Advocate Award in May 2007.

Joe White

P: 216-368-2426
F: 216-368-4681
Mather House 113
11201 Euclid Avenue
Cleveland OH 44106

Professor White came to Case in 2000 as Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for Policy Studies, and became Department Chair in 2003. He came to Cleveland from New Orleans, where he was Associate Professor of Health Systems Management in the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine at Tulane University. Previously he was a Research Associate and then Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.. He received his A.B. from the University of Chicago and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.

Dr. White's research interests and publications have focused on federal budgeting policy and politics, Congress, health care finance in the United States and other countries, Social Security and Medicare. His most recent book is False Alarm: Why the Greatest Threat to Social Security and Medicare is the Campaign to Save Them (Johns Hopkins University Press 2001; Paperback with new postscript, 2003). He is also the author of Competing Solutions: American Health Care Proposals and International Experience (Brookings, 1995) and, with Aaron Wildavsky, of The Deficit and the Public Interest: The Search for Responsible Budgeting in the 1980s (University of California Press and The Russell Sage Foundation, 1989; Paperback with postscript 1991). Among his recent publications are “Markets and Medical Care: The United States, 1993 – 2005” in The Milbank Quarterly (September 2007); “Protecting Medicare: The Best Defense is a Good Offense” in Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law (April 2007); and “American Health Care in International Perspective,” in James A. Morone, Theodor J. Litman, and Leonard S. Robins ed., Health Politics and Policy 4th ed. (2008). His current research projects include a book on health care cost control, articles on governance of health care systems, and articles on reforming the U.S. federal budget process.