Sustainable U.S. Health Spending: Serious Issues – Sound Policy Solutions
 
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Presenters

Peter Bach
Director, Center for Health Policy and Outcomes
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

Peter B. Bach is a physician, epidemiologist, and writer at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center where he is Director of the Center for Health Policy and Outcomes. His research focuses on healthcare policy, particularly as it relates to Medicare, racial disparities in cancer care quality, and lung cancer. Along with his scientific writings he is a frequent contributor to The New York Times and other newspapers.


Website:
https://www.mskcc.org/profile/peter-bach
Twitter:
@peterbachmd


 
Melinda Beeuwkes Buntin
Professor and Chair
Vanderbilt University Department of Health Policy

Melinda Buntin, Ph.D. is the chair of the Department of Health Policy at Vanderbilt University’s School of Medicine. 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, Dr. Buntin worked at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, where she established and directed the economic analysis, evaluation, and modeling group, while on leave from RAND. At RAND, Dr. Buntin served as deputy director of RAND Health’s Economics, Financing, and Organization Program, director of Public Sector Initiatives for RAND Health, and co-director of the Bing Center for Health Economics. Her research at RAND focused on insurance benefit design, health insurance markets, provider payment, and the care use and needs of the elderly.

She has an A.B. from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton and a Ph.D. in Health Policy with a concentration in economics from Harvard University.

Website:
https://medschool.vanderbilt.edu/health-policy/person/melinda-j-beeuwkes-buntin-phd
Twitter:
@MelindaBBuntin


 
Ceci Connolly
President & CEO
Alliance of Community Health Plans

Ceci Connolly is the Managing Director of the Health Research Institute at PwC, a research organization dedicated to objective analysis on the issues, policies and trends important to health organizations and policymakers.

Ms. Connolly is a veteran journalist, author and commentator who spent 25 years in the news business, reporting on national politics, health care, Latin America and natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina. As the national health correspondent for the Washington Post, she chronicled enactment of the Affordable Care Act and was co-author of Landmark: The Inside Story of America’s New Health Care Law and What It Means for Us All.

During her years in journalism, she reported on six U.S. presidential campaigns and was a major contributor to the book Deadlock: The Inside Story of America’s Closest Election. She spent more than two years based in Mexico City, traveling extensively throughout Latin America. She produced a daily blog on Mexico’s 2006 presidential race, as well as a multimedia project on HIV-AIDS along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Ms. Connolly is a board member for the nonprofit Whitman Walker Health, and is the first non-physician to receive the Mayo Clinic's prestigious Plummer Society Award for promoting deeper understanding of science and medicine. She also serves on the National Advisory Board of the Center for Sustainable Health Spending and was the recipient of a fellowship at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

She has appeared on PBS’ Washington Week, The Early Show on CBS, NPR’s Diane Rehm Show and several news programs on MSNBC and the Fox News Channel. She has spoken at the prestigious National Press Club, the Chautauqua Institution, the Cleveland Clinic, numerous universities and health care conferences. Prior to joining PwC, Ms. Connolly was a senior adviser at the McKinsey Center for Health Reform.

In her role at the Health Research Institute, Ms. Connolly oversees a team of independent analysts and writers who track major developments across the health care spectrum.

Website: http://www.ceciconnolly.com/ Twitter: @CeciConnolly


 
Doug Elmendorf
Dean
Harvard Kennedy School of Public Policy

Douglas William Elmendorf is an American economist who is the Dean and Don K. Price Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. He previously served as the Director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) from 2009 to 2015. He was a Brookings Institution senior fellow from 2007 to 2009, and briefly in 2015 following his time at the CBO, and was a director of the Hamilton Project at Brookings.


Website:
https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty/douglas-elmendorf
Twitter:
@Kennedy_School


 
Matthew Fiedler
Fellow, Center for Health Policy
Brookings Institution Economic Studies Program

Matthew Fiedler is a fellow with the Center for Health Policy in Brookings' Economic Studies Program. 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 the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance reforms, Medicaid expansion, provider payment reform efforts, and the excise tax on high-cost employer-sponsored health coverage. Fiedler holds a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University and a B.A. in mathematics and economics from Swarthmore College.


Website:
https://www.brookings.edu/experts/matthew-fiedler/
Twitter:
@MattAFiedler


 
Sherry Glied
Dean, New York University
Wagner Graduate School of Public Service

In 2013, Sherry Glied was named Dean of New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. From 1989-2013, she was Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. She was Chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management from 1998-2009. On June 22, 2010, Glied was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at the Department of Health and Human Services, and served in that capacity from July 2010 through August 2012. She had previously served as Senior Economist for health care and labor market policy on the President’s Council of Economic Advisers in 1992-1993, under Presidents Bush and Clinton, and participated in the Clinton Health Care Task Force. She has been elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Social Insurance, and the Board of AcademyHealth, and has been a member of the Congressional Budget Office’s Panel of Health Advisers.


Website:
https://wagner.nyu.edu/community/faculty/sherry-glied
Twitter:
@NYUWagner


 
Jeff Goldsmith
President, Health Futures, Inc. and
National Advisor, Navigant Healthcare

Jeff Goldsmith is the National Advisor for Navigant Healthcare. He is also Associate Professor of Public Health Sciences at the University of Virginia. For eleven years ending in 1990, he was a lecturer in the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago, on health services management and policy. He has also lectured on these topics at the Wharton School of Finance, Johns Hopkins, Washington University and the University of California at Berkeley. His interests include: biotechnology, health policy, international health systems, and the future of health services.

Full Bio: http://www.healthfutures.net/p-a.php


 
Katherine Hayes
Director of Health Policy
Bipartisan Policy Center

Katherine Hayes is the director of health policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center. Prior to joining BPC, Hayes held the position of associate research professor in the department of health policy at the George Washington University (GW) School of Public Health and Health Services. Her primary areas of research included public and private health insurance coverage, reimbursement and financing, and the integration of Medicare and Medicaid services. She taught graduate-level courses in federal advocacy, policymaking, and the federal budget process.

Her government experience includes serving as health policy advisor to members of the Senate and the House of Representatives in both political parties. Hayes served as a program consultant for the State of Missouri Medicaid agency, and as health and education policy advisor for the State of Texas, Office of State-Federal Relations. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree in international studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Juris Doctor from the American University Washington College of Law.


Website:
https://bipartisanpolicy.org/person/katherine-hayes/
Twitter:
@jetthayes


 
Katherine Hempstead
Sr. Adviser to the Executive VP
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

Since late 2013, Katherine Hempstead, PhD, has directed the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s work on health insurance coverage. In addition, Hempstead works on issues related to health care price transparency and value. She joined the Foundation in 2011 as a senior program officer in the Research-Evaluation-Learning unit.

Previously, Hempstead was director of the Center for Health Statistics in the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services. She also served as statistician/analyst in the Office of the Attorney General, New Jersey Department of Law and Public Safety, and as an assistant research professor at the Rutgers Center for State Health Policy, where she currently holds a visiting faculty position. Hempstead also held positions at New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service, and at Catholic University, in Washington D.C. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Office of Population Research at Princeton University.

Born in New Jersey, Hempstead received a PhD in Demography and History from the University of Pennsylvania, where she also earned a BA in Economics and History.


Website:
http://www.rwjf.org/en/about-rwjf/leadership-staff/H/katherine-hempstead.html
Twitter:
@khemp64


 
Joanne Kenen
Executive Editor, Health Care
POLITICO

Joanne Kenen is the health care editor of Politico. Kenen has covered everything from Haitian voodoo festivals to U.S. presidential campaigns. (Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference.) Since arriving in Washington in 1994, she has focused on health policy and health politics. She joined POLITICO in Sept. 2011.

Kenen got the newspaper bug in second grade (the Teeny Town News), spent way too much time at the Harvard Crimson and then found herself in Central America, where she had an Inter American Press Association fellowship. She worked for Reuters in New York, Florida and the Caribbean and Washington. As a Kaiser Family Foundation media fellow in 2006-07, she wrote about aging and palliative care. She spent three years writing and blogging about health policy at the nonpartisan New America Foundation.

Her work has appeared in numerous publications including The Atlantic, Kaiser Health News, the Washingtonian, CQ, The Washington Post, the Center for Public Integrity, Health Affairs, AARP’s The Magazine and Bulletin, National Journal, Slate and Miller-McCune. She co-authored two books that have absolutely nothing to do with health: “The Costa Rica Reader” and a parenting book, “The Sleep Lady’s Good Night, Sleep Tight.” One was adopted in college courses. The other one made money.

When she isn’t busy trying to figure out what Congress is up to (not that Congress always knows what Congress is up to), she can be found in Bethesda, Md., with her husband, Ken Cohen, and their two sons. When she needs a break from health policy, she writes about her kids, chocolate cake or cross-dressing female pirates.


Website:
http://www.politico.com/reporters/JoanneKenen.html
Twitter:
@JoanneKenen


 
Alice Rivlin
Senior Fellow, Center for Health Policy
Brookings Institution Economic Studies Program

Alice Mitchell Rivlin is an economist and former U.S. Federal Reserve and budget official. She served as Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve, Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, and founding Director of the Congressional Budget Office. Rivlin is an expert on the U.S. federal budget and macroeconomic policy. She is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and visiting professor at Georgetown University. Rivlin also co-chaired, with former Senator Pete Domenici, the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Debt Reduction Task Force.


Website:
https://www.brookings.edu/experts/alice-m-rivlin/
Twitter:
@BrookingsEcon


 
Elisabeth Rosenthal
Editor-in-Chief
Kaiser Health News

Elisabeth Rosenthal 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. Libby’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.


Website:
https://www.kff.org/person/elisabeth-rosenthal/
Twitter:
@rosenthalhealth


 
Louise Sheiner
Robert Kerr Sr. Fellow in Economic Studies & Hutchins Center
Brookings Institution

Louise Sheiner is a senior fellow in Economic Studies and policy director for the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy. She had served as an economist with the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System since 1993, most recently as the senior economist in the Fiscal Analysis Section for the Research and Statistics Division. In her time at the Fed, she was also appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy at the U.S. Department of the Treasury (1996), and served as Senior Staff Economist for the Council of Economic Advisers (1995-96). Before joining the Fed, Dr. Sheiner was an economist at the Joint Committee on Taxation.

Dr. Sheiner pursues research on health spending and other fiscal issues. She received her PhD in economics from Harvard University, as well as an undergraduate degree in biology at Harvard.

Website:
http://www.brookings.edu/experts/sheinerl
Twitter:
@BrookingsGov


 
Jonathan Skinner
Freedman Prof. in Economics
Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy & Clinical Practice

Jonathan Skinner is a health economist who leads several research projects funded by the National Institute on Aging (NIA). These are large-scale interdisciplinary collaborations at Dartmouth and partner institutions, drawing on Dartmouth’s comprehensive Medicare and Medicaid datasets. Skinner’s ongoing research focuses on studying the contribution of “high-tech” health care to cost growth, the diffusion of various types of medical innovations (beneficial and harmful), how provider networks affect technology diffusion, and whether high-quality health providers affect population-level health outcomes.

A member of the National Academy of Medicine, Dr. Skinner is also a research associate and director of the Aging Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). He has taught in Dartmouth’s economics department since 1995, where he serves as the James O. Freedman Presidential Professor, and is a frequent contributor to the national conversation about health policy.


Website:
https://economics.dartmouth.edu/people/jonathan-s-skinner
Twitter:
@JonSkinner17


 
Lauren Taylor
Harvard Business School
Co-Author, The American Health Care Paradox

Lauren Taylor is a third-year doctoral student in health policy and management. Her primary domestic interest is in understanding how organizations are changing to attend to social, behavioral and environmental determinants of health. Globally, she studies the ethics of global health research and project management. Prior to joining the Health Policy program, she graduated as a Presidential Scholar from Harvard's Divinity School in 2015 where she earned a Master of Divinity. During that time, Lauren was a fellow at the Harvard Global Health Institute and Petrie Flom Center for Health Law, Policy and Biotechnology at Harvard Law School. In 2013, Lauren and Elizabeth H. Bradley, PhD jointly authored The American Health Care Paradox, which has been featured in media outlets such as CSPAN, MSNBC, The New York Times and The New Yorker. Lauren received a BA in the History of Science/History of Medicine and Master in Public Health from Yale University.


Website:
https://healthpolicy.fas.harvard.edu/people/lauren-taylor
Twitter:
@LaurenTaylorMPH