Speaker biographies
Robert L. Ohsfeldt is a professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the School of Rural Public Health, Texas A&M Health Science Center. He is author or coauthor of more than eighty papers published in peer-reviewed journals, and has been the principal investigator for research grants funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the National Cancer Institute, the Centers for Disease Control, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Ohsfeldt has served as a peer-reviewer for more than thirty scientific journals and has been a member of grant review panels for the National Institutes of Health, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and the Department of Veterans Affairs. He also is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Managed Care Pharmacy. Before joining the faculty at Texas A&M, Ohsfeldt was a professor in the Department of Health Management and Policy at the University of Iowa. Previously, he was manager of health outcomes research for Eli Lilly and Company, where he received the President’s Award from Lilly Research Laboratories in 2001. Mr. Ohsfeldt also has been a research economist with the Center for Health Policy Research at the American Medical Association, an assistant professor in the School of Health Administration and Policy at Arizona State University, and a professor in the Department of Health Care Organization and Policy at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he served as interim department chair in 1997. Ohsfeldt was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Fellow in Healthcare Finance at Johns Hopkins University and the Texas Medical Center during 1987–88.
John E. Schneider is an assistant professor in the Department of Health Management and Policy at the University of Iowa College of Public Health. He holds secondary appointments in the Department of Economics and the Iowa City Veterans Affairs Center for Research in the Implementation of Innovative Strategies in Practice. He has over fifteen years of experience studying economic and organizational aspects of the health-care industry. Mr. Schneider was a research analyst at the Center for Health Economics Research from 1989 to 1993, during which time he was involved extensively in analyses of large databases, cost analyses, and economic modeling of regulatory programs. Prior to joining the faculty at Iowa, he was the director of research at the California Association of Health Plans. His research interests and expertise include health insurance and managed care, regulation, hospital competition, specialty hospitals, economic effects of clinical practice guidelines, insurer-provider contracting, cost effectiveness analysis, and workplace health promotion. Mr. Schneider has served as a consultant to managed care organizations, state health departments, trade associations, and research organizations.
Gerard F. Anderson was the national program director for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation–sponsored program called Partnership for Solutions: Better Lives for People with Chronic Conditions. Dr. Anderson is a professor of health policy and management and international health at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Hospital Finance and Management, and co-director of the Johns Hopkins Program for Medical Technology and Practice Assessment. He is currently conducting research on chronic conditions, comparative insurance systems in developing countries, medical education, hospital payment reform, and technology diffusion. He has directed reviews of health systems for the World Bank in Korea, Mexico, Taiwan, and Ecuador. Prior to his arrival at Johns Hopkins in 1983, Dr. Anderson held various positions in the Office of the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, where he helped to develop Medicare prospective payment legislation. He has authored two books on health-care payment policy, published over 200 peer-reviewed articles, and testified before Congress over thirty times as an individual witness. He currently serves on multiple editorial committees.
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 also serves on the National Advisory Council for Healthcare Research and Quality of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and on the Department of Health and Human Services’ Medicaid Commission. Mr. Helms is the editor of several AEI books on health policy, including American Health Policy: Critical Issues for Reform; Health Policy Reform: Competition and Controls; Competitive Strategies in the Pharmaceutical Industry; and Medicare in the 21st Century: Seeking Fair and Efficient Reform. 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 policy in the Department of Health and Human Services.
Stephen Pollard is a columnist who writes regularly in the Times (London) and Daily Mail about politics, policy, and culture. He has been described by the Sunday Times as a new labour “guru,” and by the New Statesman as a leading “British neoconservative.” His bestselling and controversial biography of former British home secretary David Blunkett was published in December 2004. He is a senior fellow at the Centre for the New Europe, the Brussels-based free-market think tank, where he directs the health policy program. In February 2005 he was an expert witness in the U.S. Senate’s hearing on drug importation. He is chairman of the Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism. From 1998 until 2000 he was a columnist and chief leader writer on the Daily Express. Between 1995 and 1998, he was head of research at the Social Market Foundation, and from 1992 until 1995 he was research director at the Fabian Society. He is the author of numerous pamphlets and books on health and education policy, and is coauthor with Lord Adonis (now schools minister and previously the prime minister’s senior policy adviser) of the bestselling A Class Act: The Myth of Britain’s Classless Society (Penguin, 1998). He was a prize winner at the 2003 Bastiat Awards for Journalism.
Wilfried Prewo is chief executive of the Hannover Chamber of Industry and Commerce in Hannover, Germany. With a membership of 130,000 firms, it is one of the largest German chambers. The chamber addresses major national and European policy issues, especially in the areas of trade policy, social and labor policy, taxation, and regulation, topics about which Mr. Prewo writes and speaks frequently. The Hannover Chamber is an active pro-market voice in Germany. Mr. Prewo also has been a member of the board of the Centre for the New Europe in Brussels.
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