Speaker biographies
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 is also a commissioner on the Maryland Health Services Cost Review Commission. Prior to coming to AEI, Mr. Antos served as assistant director for health and human resources at the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the division within the CBO that provides Congress with analyses of proposed changes to federal programs and policies in areas such as health, income security, education, employment, and housing. 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 served as deputy chief of staff and the principal deputy assistant secretary for management and budget at the Department of Health and Human Services.
Katherine Baicker was nominated by President George W. Bush on September 22, 2005, and confirmed by the Senate on November 4, 2005, to serve as a member of the Council of Economic Advisers. She is an associate professor in the Department of Public Policy at the School of Public Affairs at UCLA, and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research in the public economics program. Her research areas include health economics, welfare, and public finance, with a particular focus on the financing of health insurance, spending on public programs, and fiscal federalism.
Roger Feldman is the Blue Cross Professor of Health Insurance and professor of economics at the University of Minnesota. Mr. Feldman’s research covers 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 savings 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 the four national research centers sponsored by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). He advised CMS on the design of a demonstration of competitive pricing for Medicare+Choice plans and recently provided advice to the assistant secretary for planning and evaluation at the Department of Health and Human Services on the potential for health savings accounts to reduce the uninsurance rate 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 of 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.
Paul Fronstin is a senior research associate with the Employee Benefit Research Institute, a private, nonprofit, nonpartisan organization committed to original public policy research and education on economic security and employee benefits. He is also director of the institute’s Health Research and Education Program. Mr. Fronstin’s research interests include trends in employment-based health benefits, consumer-driven health benefits, the uninsured, retiree health benefits, employee benefits and taxation, and public opinion about health care. He currently serves on the advisory council for the Emeriti Retirement Health Program.
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.
Thomas P. Miller, a former senior health economist for the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress, studies health-care policy and regulation at AEI. A lawyer by training and a former journalist, Miller has worked on issues ranging from Medicare prescription drug benefits to medical savings accounts. While at the committee, he worked on social security reform legislation and organized a number of hearings that focused on reforms in private health-care markets. He previously was the director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute for three years, where he directed a research program that focused on restoring individual choice, control, and responsibility to the U.S. health-care system. Miller also spent fourteen years at the Competitive Enterprise Institute as director of economic policy studies and as a senior policy analyst for issues involving health-care regulation, entitlement reform, insurance regulation, banking, antitrust, fiscal policy, and privacy.
Bill Thomas, former chairman of the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee, is a visiting scholar at AEI. He served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1978–2007, most recently representing California's Twenty-Second Congressional District, which covered most of Kern and San Luis Obispo Counties and part of Los Angeles County. Thomas was elected chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee in January 2001 and served until January 2007. Thomas was a chief architect of the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003, which added a new Medicare prescription drug benefit and also made critical reforms to the program. Prior to his election as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Thomas served as chairman of the Ways and Means Health Subcommittee, where he was instrumental in passing the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. In 1998 he was appointed administrative chairman of the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare. He was also chairman of the House Administration Committee from 1995 to 2001. Before entering Congress, he was a faculty member at Bakersfield Community College and a member of the California State Assembly.
Tom Wildsmith is a consulting actuary in the Hay Group’s Arlington, Virginia, office. He has twenty-one years of experience dealing with all aspects of health-insurance policy and financing, including twelve years of operational experience with a commercial carrier and nine years of advocacy experience with a major health insurance trade association. Mr. Wildsmith’s operational experience includes pricing, product development, systems development and management, and actuarial support for small and large groups on all group products, including managed care, life insurance, long-term disability insurance, and ancillary group products. Mr. Wildsmith is a fellow of the Society of Actuaries and a member of the American Academy of Actuaries.
Roberton Williams is a principal research associate at the Tax Policy Center (TPC), a joint venture of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution. Prior to joining TPC in late 2006, he spent over twenty-two years at the Congressional Budget Office, most recently as deputy assistant director for tax analysis, and earlier as a principal analyst in the Congressional Budget Office’s tax analysis and health and human resources divisions. Before coming to Washington in 1984, he taught economics at Williams College.
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