Speaker biographies

Joseph Antos is the Wilson H. Taylor Scholar in Health Care and Retirement Policy at AEI. He is also 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.

Kathleen Carey is an associate professor in the department of health policy and management at the Boston University School of Public Health and an economist at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Center for Health Quality, Outcomes and Economic Research. Ms. Carey has published extensively on the U.S. hospital industry. She has developed methods of hospital cost analysis and has adapted state-of-the-art econometric models to the study of hospital cost growth. Her most recent research focuses on the effects of hospital organizational change on performance of individual hospitals and on the hospital industry. Ms. Carey has studied the effects of hospital management conducted by external contract management organizations, the efficiency implications of systems of hospitals operating under common ownership, and the economic consequences associated with hospital network arrangements. Most recently, she has received grants from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to study the effects of physician-owned single specialty hospitals on cost efficiency and on competition.

H. E. Frech III is a professor of economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara and an adjunct scholar at AEI. Previously, he was a visiting professor at Harvard University and at the University of Chicago and an adjunct professor at Sciences Po de Paris. Mr. Frech is the North American editor of the International Journal of the Economics of Business. He has published numerous articles in journals such as the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, the Journal of Law and Economics, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and Review d’Economie Politique. Mr. Frech has also written or edited several books, including Health Care Matters (AEI Press, 2004), The Productivity of Health Care and Pharmaceuticals (AEI Press, 1999), and Competition and Monopoly in Medical Care (AEI Press, 1996).

Robert B. Helms is a resident scholar in health policy studies at AEI. He has written and lectured extensively on health policy, health economics, and the economics of the pharmaceutical industry. Mr. Helms currently participates in the Consensus Group, an informal task force that is developing market-oriented health reform concepts. He has served on the National Advisory Council for Healthcare Research and Quality of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Medicaid Commission. Mr. Helms is the editor of several AEI books on health policy, including American Health Policy: Critical Issues for Reform (AEI Press, 1993), Health Policy Reform: Competition and Controls (AEI Press, 1993), Competitive Strategies in the Pharmaceutical Industry (AEI Press, 1996), and Medicare in the 21st Century: Seeking Fair and Efficient Reform (AEI Press, 1999). He has also written on the history of Medicare, the tax treatment of health insurance, and international comparisons of health systems. From 1981 to 1989, he served as assistant secretary for planning and evaluation and deputy assistant secretary for health policyat the HHS.

David Hyman is the Richard W. and Marie L. Corman Professor of Law and a professor of medicine at the University of Illinois, where he directs the Epstein Program in Health Law and Policy. He focuses his research and writing on the regulation and financing of health care and he teaches health care regulation, civil procedure, insurance law, law and economics, professional responsibility, and tax policy. While serving as special counsel to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Mr. Hyman was the principal author and the project leader for the first joint report ever issued by the FTC and Department of Justice, “Improving Health Care: A Dose of Competition” (2004). He is also the author of Medicare Meets Mephistopheles (Cato, 2006), which was selected by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce/National Chamber Foundation as one of the top ten books of 2007. He has published widely in student edited law reviews and peer reviewed medical, health policy, and law journals. He is the author or coauthor of more than seventy-five articles and book chapters.

Robert F. Leibenluft is a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Hogan & Hartson L.L.P., where his practice is devoted entirely to antitrust matters for clients in the health care sector, including hospitals, physicians, health plans, and medical device and pharmaceutical manufacturers. Previously, Mr. Leibenluft worked as an attorney adviser in the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Office of Policy Planning, concentrating on health and antitrust matters. He joined Hogan & Hartson in 1981, became a partner in 1989, and practiced health law until January 1996, when he rejoined the FTC as assistant director for health care in the Bureau of Competition. As head of the health care division, Mr. Leibenluft supervised the review of mergers, acquisitions, and joint ventures involving hospitals, physicians, and other health care providers. He rejoined Hogan & Hartson again in September 1998. Mr. Leibenluft is currently the chair of the State Antitrust Enforcement Committee of the American Bar Association (ABA) antitrust section and is a fellow of the American Health Lawyers Association (AHLA). He has served as the vice president and as a member of the board of directors of the AHLA and as the chair of the Health Care Committee of the ABA antitrust section. He speaks and writes often on health care antitrust matters and is a member of the Bar of the District of Columbia.

Monica Noether is the executive vice president and head of the litigation and applied economics platform at CRA International, where she specializes in antitrust analysis and other competitive issues. An expert in the economics of the health care industry and its numerous regulatory policy issues, she has analyzed the competitive effects of hospital, health plan, medical device and equipment, and physician mergers. She has also addressed the economic questions related to liability and damages in allegations of attempted monopolization by and collusion among different participants in the health care industry, in intellectual property disputes, and in fraud, abuse, and kickback concerns. Ms. Noether has provided expert testimony in antitrust and reimbursement litigation and has presented her policy research to Congress and government agencies. She also has broad general expertise in the application of antitrust analysis to a variety of industries, including insurance, software, data products, retail, wholesale distribution, music, soft drinks, and energy. Ms. Noether is a member of the American Bar Association and the American Economic Association and serves as a referee for the American Economic Review and the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Matthew J. Reilly is the assistant director of Mergers IV at the Bureau of Competition of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Mr. Reilly investigates and presents antitrust cases involving hospitals, retail and wholesale sectors, food products, spirits, and consumer goods to the commission and federal courts. Before becoming assistant director, he served as an associate at Lewin-VHI, an associate at Rogers & Wells LLP, a special assistant to the U.S. attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, a staff attorney at Mergers 1 in the Bureau of Competition at the FTC, and the deputy assistant director of Mergers 1 in the Bureau of Competition at the FTC.

John Schneider is a managing principal of the Health Economics Consulting Group, LLC. He is also an adjunct faculty member in the department of economics at Drew University and a faculty affiliate at the Nicholas C. Petris Center on Health Care Markets & Consumer Welfare at the University of California, Berkeley. Mr. Schneider’s research interests and expertise include health insurance and managed care, regulation, hospital competition, specialty hospitals, clinical practice guidelines, and insurer-provider contracting. He has over eighteen years of experience studying economic and organizational aspects of the health care industry, including four years with the Center for Health Economics Research, two years as the director of research at the California Association of Health Plans, and six years on the faculty at the University of Iowa. He has also served as an expert witness on the economics of hospital competition. He is the coauthor of The Business of Health: The Role of Competition, Markets, and Regulation (AEI Press, 2006).

Steve Speil is the senior vice president of health finance and policy for the Federation of American Hospitals. He manages the Federation’s broad portfolio of payment policy issues and he serves as the chief liaison with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission. Working closely with the senior finance and policy executives in the Federation’s member companies, Mr. Speil develops and implements strategic plans designed to advance the finance and payment related regulatory and legislative interests of the Federation in the dynamic health care marketplace. Perviously, Mr. Speil was the associate vice president of policy coordination and communication for the Health Industry Manufacturers Association (now AdvaMed), the national trade group representing the medical technology industry. Mr. Speil also served as legislative counsel for the executive office of Health and Human Services and as the executive director of the Disabled Persons Protection Commission. Mr. Speil also taught health law and policy as an assistant professor at the Simmons College graduate program of health administration.

Jeff Stensland is a principal policy analyst with the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC). Prior to joining MedPAC, he was a senior research director with the Project HOPE Center for Health Affairs. He has extensive experience conducting research on the financial performance of hospitals and rural health issues. In addition to his research experience, Mr. Stensland worked in the banking industry as a financial analyst and holds the Chartered Financial Analyst certification.

Robert J. Town is the James A. Hamilton Professor of Health Economics at the University of Minnesota and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He specializes in health economics, industrial organization, and applied econometrics and his research focuses on competition in the health care marketplace. Mr. Town has studied the impact of hospital network formation on competitive outcomes, the role of competition in determining hospital quality, and the appropriate antitrust policy in health care and health insurance markets. Prior to the University of Minnesota, he was an assistant professor in the graduate school of management at the University of California, Irvine and a staff economist in the antitrust division of the U.S. Department of Justice.

William D. White is the director of the Sloan Program in Health Administration and a professor in the department of policy analysis and management in the College of Human Ecology at Cornell University. His primary areas of interest are health economics and health services. His research focuses on how competition is working in health care markets and managed care. Prior to Cornell, Mr. White taught at the University of Illinois and at Yale University.

Vivian Y. Wu is an assistant professor at the School of Policy, Planning, and Development at the University of Southern California. Her research includes examining the price bargaining between hospitals and health plans, hospital pricing dynamics between private and public health insurers, the effects of managed care and managed care backlash, the market entry of Medicare Advantage Plans, quality information and employers’ health plan switching behavior, and the financial performance of hospitals in the Los Angeles area. Ms. Wu teaches courses in health economics, health policy, and health care finance. She is also a fellow at the Bing Center of Health Economics at the RAND Corporation. From 2000 to 2001, she served as a staff economist on labor and health issues on the President's Council of Economic Advisers.

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