Speaker biographies

Richard Frank is the Margaret T. Morris Professor of Health Economics at Harvard Medical School. He is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His primary areas of research interest are the economics of health and mental health. Mr. Frank has ongoing interests in the organization and financing of care for people with mental disorders. He also studies economic policy issues related to the pharmaceutical industry.

James Heckman is a professor of economics at the University of Chicago, director of the Economics Research Center in the department of economics, and director of the Center for Social Program Evaluation at the Harris School at the University of Chicago.. He won the John Bates Clark Medal in 1983; the Nobel Prize in economic sciences in 2000; and the Jacob Mincer Award from the Society of Labor Economists and the Ulysses Medal from the University College Dublin, both in 2005. He became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1985, a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1992, and a fellow at the American Statistical Association in 2001. His recent research interests include economic models of life-cycle skill formation; the origins of inequality; evaluation of social programs; econometric models of discrete choice and longitudinal data; labor market economics; alternative models of the distribution of income; public economics; regulation and policy reform of income inequality; hedonic models and pricing of heterogeneous goods and characteristics; and heterogeneity in general equilibrium models.

Robert Kaestner is a professor in the University of Illinois at Chicago’s department of economics and a member of the Institute of Government and Public Affairs. He is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Mr. Kaestner is an expert in health and labor economics and has conducted research on the effects of Medicaid and private health insurance on infant and child health; whether or not expansions in Medicaid crowded out private health insurance; the impact of state policies on the timing, place of occurrence, and incidence of abortion; the effects of welfare reform on employment, fertility, health insurance, and health; and the effect of Title IX on adolescent physical activity and weight.

Michael McGinnis is a senior scholar at the Institute of Medicine (IOM) and executive director of the IOM Roundtable on Evidence-Based Medicine. From 1999 to 2005, Mr. McGinnis was senior vice president and founding director of the Health Group and counselor to the president at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. From 1995 to 1999, he served as scholar in residence at the National Academy of Sciences. He held appointments throughout the Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations (1977–95), as assistant surgeon general and deputy assistant secretary for health in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, where he was responsible for coordinating policies in health promotion and disease prevention. He has had a career-long interest and involvement in international health, including service in 1995–96 as chair of the World Bank/European Commission task force to rebuild the health sector in Bosnia and in 1974–75 as field epidemiologist and state coordinator for the World Health Organization’s smallpox eradication program in India.

Thomas P. Miller is a resident fellow at AEI, where he researches health policy, with particular emphasis on information transparency, health insurance regulation, and consumer-driven health care. He is also a member of the National Advisory Council of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Before joining AEI, Mr. Miller served for three years as senior health economist for the Joint Economic Committee, where he organized a series of hearings focusing on promising reforms in private health care markets and drafted several social security reform bills. He also has been director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute and director of economic policy studies at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Mr. Miller’s writing has appeared in such publications as Health Affairs, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Reader’s Digest, National Review, the Journal of Law and Contemporary Problems, Regulation, and Cato Journal. He has testified before various congressional committees on issues such as Medicare prescription drug benefits, medical savings accounts, and tax credits for health insurance.

Tomas J. Philipson is a visiting scholar at AEI and a professor in the Harris School, the department of economics, and the Law School at the University of Chicago. He served in the Bush administration as the senior economic adviser to the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration from 2003 to 2004 and subsequently as the senior economic adviser to the administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services from 2004 to 2005. He is currently a member of the advisory committee of the University of Chicago’s Office of Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer. Mr. Philipson is an editor of Forum for Health Economics & Policy and is on the editorial board of Health Economics. His honors and awards include the Kenneth Arrow Award from the International Health Economics Association in 2000 and 2006, the Garfield Award from Research America in 2007, the Prêmio Haralambos Simeonidis from the Brazilian Economic Association in 2006, and the Distinguished Economic Research Award from the Milken Institute in 2003. Mr. Philipson was the cofounder of Precision Health Economics, LLC; a board member of MedErr Inc. and the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest; an adviser to the Gerson Lehrman Group; and a consultant for Lexecon and Analysis Group.

Barak D. Richman is a professor of law at Duke University School of Law. Mr. Richman’s research interests include the economics of contracting, new institutional economics, antitrust, and health care policy. He teaches contracts, antitrust, and health law, and he has guest taught classes at the Fuqua School of Business and the Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy. He was invited to the Yale/Stanford Junior Faculty Forum in 2004, received the Duke Law School’s Blueprint Award in 2005, and was a recipient of the Provost’s Common Fund Award in 2006. His recent work has been published in the Columbia Law Review, the Cornell Law Review, Legislative Studies Quarterly, and Law & Social Inquiry.

Louise Russell is a research professor of health economics at Rutgers University, where she is also the chair of the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research. She is the author of seven influential books and monographs, including Technology in Hospitals (Brookings Institution Press, 1979), Is Prevention Better Than Cure? (Brookings Institution Press, 1986), Medicare's New Hospital Payment System: Is It Working? (Brookings Institution Press, 1989), and Educated Guesses: Making Policy about Medical Screening Tests (University of California Press, 1994). She has made outstanding contributions to health policy studies, particularly in the areas of technological diffusion, prevention, simulation modeling, and cost-effectiveness analysis. She served on the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force sponsored by the Department of Health and Human Services from 1984 to 1988 and was cochair of the U.S. Public Health Service Panel on Cost-Effectiveness in Health and Medicine from 1993 through 1996. Ms. Russell’s distinction has been recognized by election to the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine, where she has served on a number of committees, including the National Cancer Policy Board from 2001 through 2005.

David Wennberg, M.D., is an internist with specialty training in health services and outcomes research. He currently serves as chief science and products officer at Health Dialog. Prior to this role, he cofounded Health Dialog Analytic Solutions, the information subsidiary of Health Dialog of which he currently serves as president and chief operating officer. Dr. Wennberg is also a member of the Primary Project Team of the Dartmouth Atlas Working Group at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice. He served as the director of the Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation at the Maine Medical Center, focusing on the drivers of utilization and quality in the delivery of health care services.