Health Care System Crisis:How Can We Proceed with Reform?

Friday, April 16, 2004

Biographies

Robert B. Helms is a resident scholar and the director of health policy studies at AEI. He has written and lectured extensively on health policy, health economics, and pharmaceutical economic issues. Mr. Helms currently participates in the Consensus Group, an informal task force that is developing market-oriented health reform concepts. From 1981 to 1989, he served as the assistant secretary for planning and evaluation and deputy assistant secretary for health policy in the Department of Health and Human Services. Mr. Helms is the editor of several AEI publications on health policy: Medicare in the Twenty-first Century: Seeking Fair and Efficient Reform; American Health Policy: Critical Issues for Reform; Health Policy Reform: Competition and Controls; Health Care Policy and Politics: Lessons from Four Countries; and Competitive Strategies in the Pharmaceutical Industry.

Rudolph G. Penner is a senior fellow and holds the Arjay and Frances Miller Chair in Public Policy at the Urban Institute. Previously, he was a managing director of the Barents Group, a KPMG Company. Mr. Penner was director of the Congressional Budget Office from 1983 to 1987. From 1977 to 1983, he was a resident scholar at AEI. Mr. Penner’s previous posts in government include assistant director for economic policy at the Office of Management and Budget, deputy assistant secretary for economic affairs at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and senior staff economist at the Council of Economic Advisers. Before 1975, he was a professor of economics at the University of Rochester. Mr. Penner is the author of numerous books, pamphlets and articles on tax and spending policy and has authored columns for various newspapers, including the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times. His most recent book, coauthored with Isabel Sawhill and Timothy Taylor, is Updating America’s Social Contract.

David M. Walker became the seventh comptroller-general of the United States and began his fifteen-year term when he took his oath of office in November 1998. As comptroller-general, Mr. Walker is the nation’s chief accountability officer and head of the U.S. General Accounting Office. Between 1989 and 1998, Mr. Walker was a partner and global managing director of the human capital services practice at Arthur Andersen LLP and was also a member of the board of Arthur Andersen Financial Advisers. While a partner at Arthur Andersen, he served as a public trustee for Social Security and Medicare from 1990 to 1995. Mr. Walker was assistant secretary of labor for pension and welfare benefit programs from 1987 to 1989 and, in 1985, was acting executive director of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. His earlier technical, professional, and business experience involved Price Waterhouse, Coopers & Lybrand, and Source Services Corporation. Mr. Walker is the author of Retirement Security: Understanding and Planning Your Financial Future (John Wiley & Sons, 1996) and a coauthor of Delivering on the Promise: How to Attract, Manage, and Retain Human Capital (Free Press, 1998). He has also written numerous articles and opinion letters on a variety of subjects. Mr. Walker is frequently quoted on a range of government and management issues and has been the subject of several cover stories in various national, professional, and governmental journals.