Speaker biographies
Joseph Antos is the Wilson H. Taylor Scholar in Health Care and Retirement Policy at AEI. He also is a commissioner of the Maryland Health Services Cost Review Commission, and an adjunct professor at the School of Public Health of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Mr. Antos’s research focuses on the economics of health policy, including Medicare reform, health insurance regulation, and the uninsured. He is the editor, with Alice Rivlin, of Restoring Fiscal Sanity 2007: The Health Spending Challenge (Brookings Institution Press, 2007). Before joining AEI, Mr. Antos was assistant director for health and human resources at the Congressional Budget Office, and he held senior positions in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Office of Management and Budget, and the President’s Council of Economic Advisers.
John E. Calfee is a resident scholar at AEI. He previously worked on the economics of consumer protection—including advertising and marketing, the tort liability system, tobacco, and other topics—at the Bureau of Economics at the Federal Trade Commission. He has taught marketing and consumer behavior at the business schools of the University of Maryland at College Park and Boston University and spent a year as a visiting senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Mr. Calfee’s academic articles and opinion pieces cover a variety of topics, including tort liability, advertising and information, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulation, and the pharmaceutical market. His op-eds have run in the Wall Street Journal, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Los Angeles Times, and numerous other newspapers and magazines. His recent scholarly publications have appeared in Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, Health Affairs, and the Supreme Court Economic Review. He has published three short books: Fear of Persuasion: A New Perspective on Advertising and Regulation (AEI Press, 1997); Prices, Markets, and the Pharmaceutical Revolution (AEI Press, 2000); and Biotechnology and the Patent System: Balancing Innovation and Property Rights, with Claude Barfield (AEI Press, 2007). He has also testified before Congress and federal agencies on various topics, including alcohol advertising; biodefense vaccine research; international drug prices; the Vioxx episode; and, most recently, FDA oversight of drug safety.
Mark Duggan is a professor of economics at the University of Maryland and a research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research. His primary fields of interest are public finance and health economics and his current research focuses on theoretically modeling and empirically estimating the effect of government expenditure programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid on the behavior of individuals and firms. He is also a member of the American Economic Association, the Population Association of America, and the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management. He was a fellow of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation from 2004 to 2006. He currently serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Public Economics and the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy. His work has been published in many leading journals, including the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics. Mr. Duggan and his coauthor, Melissa Kearney, are the recipients of the 2007 Raymond Vernon Prize for the best article in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management for that year.
Dana Goldman is the director of the Bing Center for Health Economics at RAND Corporation, holds the chair in health economics, and directs the program in economics, finance, and organization. He is also an adjunct professor of health services and radiology at the University of California, Los Angeles and a research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research. Mr. Goldman serves on the editorial boards of several publications, including Health Affairs and the Forum for Health Economics & Policy. He was the recipient of the National Institute for Health Care Management Research Foundation award for excellence in health policy, and the Alice S. Hersh New Investigator Award, which recognizes the outstanding contributions of a young scholar to the field of health services research.
Helen Levy is an assistant professor with the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan, a research scientist at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, and a research affiliate with the Population Studies Center. Her research interests include the areas of health economics, public finance and labor economics. Her most recent work explores the financial consequences of poor health for households without health insurance and the determinants of men's and women's occupation choices. She has produced numerous publications appearing in such journals as Journal of the American Medical Association, Annual Review of Public Health, and Journal of Labor Economics.
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 is
currently a health care adviser to the presidential campaign of John McCain and 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. 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 is the cofounder of
Precision Health Economics, LLC. He is affiliated with the Manhattan Institute, the
RAND Corporation, the Milken Institute, the Heartland Institute, and the Center for
Medicine in the Public Interest; is an adviser to the Gerson Lehrman Group; and is a
consultant for Lexecon and Analysis Group.
Lambert van der Walde is the capital markets adviser to the administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). He directs the CMS capital markets efforts, which include advising the CMS administrator and other administration officials of expected and actual market consequences of new and proposed regulatory and legislative actions, as well as health care industry market performance, access to capital, and financial outlook. Mr. Lambert also serves as the agency’s liaison between policy makers, the investor community, and the health care industry. He speaks on a regular basis to investor and industry groups, provides explanation and interpretation of government health care policy and processes to research analysts and investors, and develops strategic relationships with leaders in the health care industry and the financial markets. Prior to serving the Bush administration, Mr. Lambert worked for Salomon Smith Barney’s Investment Banking Division, where he focused on equity, debt underwriting, mergers, and acquisitions advisory services. He has also worked in venture capital financing and other sectors of the financial services industry.
David Weir is a research professor at the Survey Research Center and a research affiliate with the Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan. His current research interests include the measurement of health-related quality of life; the use of cost-effectiveness measures in health policy and medical decision-making; the role of supplemental health insurance in the Medicare population; the effects of health, gender, and marital status on economic well-being in retirement; and the effects of early-life experience on longevity and health at older ages. He has written numerous publications appearing in journals such as Annals of Internal Medicine, Social Science and Medicine, Social Security Bulletin, and Neuroepidemiology.
