Speaker biographies

Roger Feldman is the Blue Cross Professor of Health Insurance and Professor of Economics at the University of Minnesota. His research examines the organization, financing, and delivery of health care with a focus on health insurance. He also studies competition among health care providers and insurers. Currently, he is evaluating the effect of consumer-directed health plans on medical care utilization and personal saving decisions. Mr. Feldman’s experience in health care policy includes serving on the senior staff of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, where he was the lead author of a chapter in the 1985 Economic Report of the President. From 1988 to 1992, he directed one of four national research centers sponsored by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). He advised CMS on the design of a demonstration of competitive pricing for Medicare M+C plans and, recently, provided advice to the assistant secretary for planning and evaluation at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on the potential for health savings accounts to increase the number of people with insurance in the United States. Mr. Feldman is a regular contributor to journals in economics and health services research. His research has received four “best paper” awards from the Association for Health Services Research and the National Institute for Health Care Management. He has been a consultant to the U.S. Department of Justice and several state regulatory agencies regarding health plan mergers and ownership changes.

Aparna Mathur is a research fellow at AEI. Her fields of specialization are applied microeconomics, international finance, and econometrics. Currently, her research focuses on studying trends in corporate taxes across countries using panel data methodology. She also analyzes health policy issues, particularly the impact of high health care costs on consumer bankruptcy filings and the disproportionate impact of state health insurance mandates on small firms. Her research on the impact of state bankruptcy laws on small firm entry and exit decisions was published as a study by the Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy. Her academic work on corporate taxation has been cited in The Economist. Ms. Mathur has held short-term consulting positions at the World Bank and has taught courses in microeconomics at the University of Maryland.

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.

Michael Morrisey is a professor of health economics and health insurance at the School of Public Health of the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He is director of the Lister Hill Center for Health Policy, an endowed research center at the university. Mr. Morrisey’s research interests have largely focused on employer-sponsored health insurance and the effects of legislation and regulation on health and health care. Recent work has examined the effects of gasoline prices, beer taxes and graduated driver’s license programs on motor vehicle fatalities, the effects of medical malpractice reforms on health insurance premiums, and the health economics labor market. His new textbook, Health Insurance, was published by the Health Administration Press earlier this year. Mr. Morrisey is the author of the AEI Press book Cost Shifting in Health Care: Separating Evidence from Rhetoric (2000). He is a fellow at the Employee Benefits Research Institute, a member of several editorial boards, and the former secretary/treasurer of the International Health Economics Association.

Stephen Parente is an associate professor of finance and director of the Medical Industry Leadership Institute at the Carlson School of Management of the University of Minnesota. His areas of research are health economics, health insurance, medical technology evaluation, and health information technology. He has extensive experience directing empirical analyses using primary and secondary databases—especially administrative databases such as those for Medicare and health insurer data—for health policy research. He has consulted for UnitedHealth Group, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Johnson & Johnson, Medtronic, Pfizer, Merck, the Johns Hopkins Hospital, and various government agencies. Mr. Parente recently concluded several studies on topics such as the impact of Medicare HMO market exit on elderly patients, identifying patterns of controlled substance misuse within health plans as a patient safety tool, and the impact of consumer health benefit knowledge on medical care demand and cost of the elderly. Before joining the University of Minnesota faculty, Mr. Parente was a legislative fellow in the U.S. Senate during the George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations’ health reform initiatives.

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