May 4, 2005

Speaker Biographies

Jon R. Gabel is vice president for Health Systems Studies at the Health Research and Educational Trust. A respected and prolific researcher, Mr. Gabel has thirty-three years of experience in conducting and presenting research on topics related to health costs, health benefits, and economics. In addition to the more than one hundred articles he's written or contributed to, Mr. Gabel is the principal investigator of all research conducted for HRET’s Employer Health Benefits Annual Survey, which is published annually along with the Kaiser Family Foundation. Mr. Gabel has testified at congressional subcommittee meetings on health insurance matters and has been called on to brief high-ranking U.S. senators. He has appeared on numerous national broadcast news programs and has been widely quoted in national print media. Mr. Gabel is a peer reviewer for sixteen professional journals and serves on the editorial advisory boards of Managed Care Outlook and Medical Care Research and Review. Prior to joining HRET in 1999, he was the director of the Center for Survey Research of KPMG Peat Marwick LLP, from 1996 to 1999. From 1994 to 1996, Mr.Gabel was director of research for the Group Health Association of America and, from 1991 to 1994, the director of employee benefits research with KPMG Peat Marwick.

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. He is also a member (2005–2007) of the National Advisory Council for Healthcare Research and Quality of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. From 1981 to 1989, he served as the assistant secretary for planning and evaluation and as 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.

Len Nichols directs the Health Policy Program at the New America Foundation, which aims to expand health insurance coverage to all Americans while reigning in costs and improving the efficiency of the overall health care system. Before joining New America, Mr. Nichols was the vice president of the Center for Studying Health System Change, a principal research associate at the Urban Institute, and the senior adviser for health policy at the Office of Management and Budget during the Clinton reform efforts of 1993–94. He has testified frequently before Congress and state legislators and has published widely in a variety of health related journals. Previously, Mr. Nichols was chair of the economics department at Wellesley College, where he taught for ten years. He also served as a member of the Competitive Pricing Advisory Commission (CPAC) and the 2001 Technical Review Panel for the Medicare Trustees Reports. He was on the advisory panel to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Covering America project and has been a consultant to the World Bank, the InterAmerican Development Bank, and the Pan American Health Organization.

Mark V. Pauly is the Bendheim Professor in the Department of Health Care Systems at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is a professor of health care systems, insurance and risk management, and business and public policy at the Wharton School and professor of economics in the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. Mr. Pauly is a former commissioner on the Physician Payment Review Commission and an active member of the Institute of Medicine. One of the nation's leading health economists, Mr. Pauly has made significant contributions to the fields of medical economics and health insurance, particularly with respect to reducing the number of uninsured through tax credits for public and private insurance, and appropriate design for Medicare in a budget-constrained environment. Mr. Pauly is a coeditor-in-chief of the International Journal of Health Care Finance and Economics and an associate editor of the Journal of Risk and Uncertainty. He has served on Institute of Medicine panels on public accountability for health insurers under Medicare and on improving the financing of vaccines. He is an appointed member of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services National Advisory Committee to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).

Eugene Steuerle is a senior fellow at The Urban Institute and co-director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. Mr. Steuerle writes a column for Tax Notes and is the author or editor of eleven books, more than 150 reports and articles, more than fifty congressional testimonies or reports, and more than 600 columns. His latest book is Contemporary U.S. Tax Policy (Urban Institute Press, 2004). He serves on the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics and on advisory panels or boards for the Congressional Budget Office, the Government Accountability Office, and others. Previous positions he has held include president of the National Tax Association (2001–2002), chair of the 1999 Technical Panel advising Social Security on its methods and assumptions, president of the National Economists Club Educational Foundation, deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury for tax analysis (1987–1989), and resident fellow at AEI. Between 1984 and 1986, he served as economic coordinator and original organizer of the Treasury's tax reform effort.

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