Joseph Antos is the Wilson H. Taylor Scholar in Health Care and Retirement Policy at AEI and an adjunct professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health. He was the assistant director for health and human resources-the division providing Congress with analyses of proposed changes to federal programs and policies in areas such as health, income security, education, employment, and housing-at the Congressional Budget Office. Mr. Antos was the director of the Office of Research and Demonstrations and deputy director of the Office of the Actuary at the Health Care Financing Administration. He was the deputy chief of staff and the principal deputy assistant secretary for management and budget at the Department of Health and Human Services.

Carolyn M. Clancy, M.D., now serves as director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). Before her appointment as director in February 2003, Dr. Clancy had served as AHRQ’s acting director since March 2002 and before that director of AHRQ's Center for Outcomes and Effectiveness Research (COER). Dr. Clancy is a general internist and health services researcher and a graduate of Boston College and the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Following clinical training in internal medicine, Dr. Clancy was a Henry Kaiser Family Foundation Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. She was also an assistant professor in the Department of Internal Medicine at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond before joining AHRQ (then named the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research) in 1990.

Dr. Clancy has published widely in peer-reviewed journals and has edited or contributed to five books. Her work in women's health was recognized by an award from the Women's Caucus of the American Public Health Association. Active in multiple professional organizations, she has been recognized as a leader within the Society of General Internal Medicine. Before becoming the director of COER in 1997, Dr. Clancy served as director of the Center for Primary Care Research. There she helped develop the U.S. Public Health Service Primary Care Policy Fellowship and led research initiatives on the interface of primary and specialty care, the impact of healthcare reforms on primary care, and the evaluation of strategies to implement clinical practice guidelines in primary care practice.

Walton Francis is a self-employed economist and policy analyst and expert in the analysis and evaluation of public programs. He developed regulatory, budgetary, and legislative reforms for many policies and programs, while working at the Office of Management and Budget and in the Office of the Secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services. He won awards for eliminating unnecessary burden from regulations and making regulation of health services more cost-effective. He pioneered the systematic comparison of health insurance plans from a consumer perspective and has for two decades authored the annual CHECKBOOK’s Guide to Health Insurance Plans for Federal Employees. He has written and testified before Congress on reforming the Federal Employees insurance program and on reforming Medicare. He recently coauthored An Evaluation of Compliance with the Regulatory Flexibility Act by Federal Agencies and a study of ways health plans could use the Internet to improve healthcare. He was co-Webmaster of the HHS departmental Web site in the mid-1990s and codesigned online versions of CHECKBOOK's Guide (at www.retireehealthplans.org and www.guidetohealthplans.org).

Newt Gingrich is well-known as the architect of the "Contract with America" that led the Republican Party to victory in 1994 by capturing the majority in the U.S. House for the first time in forty years. Mr. Gingrich was first elected to Congress in 1978 where he served the Sixth District of Georgia for twenty years. In 1995, he was elected Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives where he served until 1999. As an author, Mr. Gingrich has published seven books, including the best sellers, Contract with America and To Renew America. His most recent books are Gettysburg: A Novel of the Civil War, an active history study in the lessons of warfare based on a fictional account of the Battle of Gettysburg and Saving Lives & Saving Money, which demonstrates how to transform health and healthcare into a 21st century system. To foster such a modern health system that provides better outcomes at lower cost, Newt launched the Center for Health Transformation. Newt Gingrich is CEO of the Gingrich Group, a communications and consulting firm that specializes in transformational change, with offices in Atlanta and Washington, D.C. He serves as a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute; a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California; the honorary chairman of the NanoBusiness Alliance; and as an Advisory Board member for the Museum of the Rockies. Mr. Gingrich is also a news and political analyst for the Fox News Channel.

Rick Ratliff is executive vice president of technology and alliances for SureScripts. In this capacity, he oversees all technology development, implementation, customer support, and technology advancement efforts for SureScripts in addition to responsibility for the development of alliances with strategic physician and pharmacy stakeholders. SureScripts was founded by the National Community Pharmacists Association and the National Association of Chain Drug Stores to encourage and promote true electronic prescribing connectivity between physicians and pharmacists. Before joining SureScripts, Mr. Ratliff was cofounder and senior vice president of HEALTHvision Inc. where he created the original business and strategic plan for the company’s clinical messaging business. His responsibilities included managing the company’s sales and marketing organization, developing and implementing business plans for customer relationship management services and eHealth consulting services, and creating the eCommerce strategy and business plan. Previously, Mr. Ratliff served as vice president of healthcare information technologies for VHA, Inc. While at VHA, he managed the development and rollout of VHAseCURE.net, a nationwide private network designed as a web-based health information utility for the VHA healthcare organizations across the United States. He began his career two decades ago as a systems engineer at IBM Corporation and advanced through a succession of management positions with increasing responsibility, including leadership positions on IBM’s healthcare team as segment manager and client executive.

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