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.

Richard Foster is chief actuary for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Mr. Foster is responsible for all actuarial and other financial analyses for the Medicare and Medicaid programs. This work involves both the evaluation of the financial status of the programs under present law and the estimation of the financial effects of legislative proposals. In addition, Mr. Foster and the staff of the Office of the Actuary prepare the widely used national health expenditure account data and projections; produce the hospital input price index, Medicare Economic Index, and other price indexes used to update Medicare payments to providers; and calculate the Medicare Advantage payment benchmarks for private health plans that contract with Medicare. Finally, the Office of the Actuary reviews the actuarial bid submissions for all Medicare Advantage and Part D plans. Mr. Foster became chief actuary in February 1995. Prior to this position, he served as deputy chief actuary for the Social Security Administration for thirteen years. He is a fellow of the Society of Actuaries (1980) and a member of the American Academy of Actuaries, American Statistical Association, American Economic Association, National Academy of Social Insurance, and Senior Executives Association. He has written numerous articles and reports on Medicare and Social Security issues, including “Level of OASDI Trust Fund Assets Needed To Compensate for Adverse Contingencies” in Transactions of the Society of Actuaries (1993), “A Stochastic Evaluation of the Short Range Economic Assumptions in the 1994 OASDI Trustees Report” (Actuarial Study No. 109), and “Trends in Medicare Expenditures and Financial Status, 1966–2000” in the Health Care Financing Review.

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 pharmaceutical economic issues. 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 (2005–2007).  He recently served on the Department of Health and Human Services’ Medicaid Commission (2005–2006). Mr. Helms is the editor of several AEI publications 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, Medicaid reform, 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.

Jeanne Lambrew is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and an associate professor at George Washington University, where she teaches health policy and conducts policy–relevant research on the uninsured, Medicaid, Medicare, and long-term care. Professor Lambrew worked on health policy at the White House from 1997 through 2001 as the program associate director for Health at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and as the senior health analyst at the National Economic Council. In these roles, she helped coordinate health policy development, evaluated legislative proposals, and conducted and managed analyses and cost estimates with OMB, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Treasury Department, the Labor Department, and other relevant agencies. She was the White House lead on drafting and implementing the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and helped develop the president’s Medicare reform plan, initiative on long-term care, and other health-care proposals. She also worked at the Department of Health and Human Services during the 1993–94 health-reform efforts, and coordinated analyses of budget proposals in 1995. In 1996, Professor Lambrew was an assistant professor of public policy at Georgetown University.

John Palmer is currently a professor at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School and a public trustee for the Medicare and Social Security programs. From 1988–2003 he was dean of the Maxwell School and professor of economics and public administration. He previously held several different positions in Washington, D.C., including senior fellow of the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, and assistant secretary for planning and evaluation of the Department of Health and Human Services. Professor Palmer’s publications include thirteen books and numerous professional and popular articles on a wide range of topics related to economic, budgetary, and social policy concerns. He has testified before Congress many times and has been a consultant to various government agencies, private foundations, and universities. He has also served as an officer of several national professional associations and as a member of the visiting committee of the Brookings Institution and various committees of the National Research Council. He is a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration and past president of the National Academy of Social Insurance.

Robert Reischauer is the president of the Urban Institute. Previously, he was a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the director of the Congressional Budget Office, where he also served as a special assistant to the director, an assistant director for human resources and community development, and deputy director. From 1981 to 1986, Mr. Reischauer was the senior vice president of the Urban Institute. He is a member of the Harvard Corporation and serves on the boards of several educational and nonprofit organizations. Mr. Reischauer is the vice chair of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission and was the chair of the National Academy of Social Insurance’s project “Restructuring Medicare for the Long Term.” He frequently contributes to the opinion pages of the nation’s major newspapers, comments on public policy developments on radio and television, and testifies before Congressional committees.

Thomas Saving is the director of the Private Enterprise Research Center, a University Distinguished Professor of Economics, and the Jeff Montgomery Professor of Economics at Texas A&M University. Mr. Saving served on the faculty at the University of Washington at Seattle and Michigan State University before joining Texas A&M in 1968. Mr. Saving’s research has covered the areas of antitrust economics, monetary economics, and health economics. He has been a referee or a member of the editorial boards of many major U.S. economics journals and is currently a coeditor of Economic Inquiry. His current research emphasis is on the benefit of markets in solving the pressing issues in health care and Social Security. He is the coeditor of Medicare Reform: Issues and Answers (University of Chicago Press, 1999) and the coauthor of The Economics of Medicare Reform (W.E. Upjohn Institute, 2000). In addition, he has published many articles in professional journals and is the author of two influential books on monetary theory. Mr. Saving was previously president of the Western Economics Association, the Southern Economics Association, and the Association of Private Enterprise Education. In 2000, President Clinton appointed Mr. Saving as a public trustee of the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds. On May 2, 2001, President George W. Bush named Mr. Saving to the bipartisan President’s Commission to Strengthen Social Security. On April 19, 2006, President Bush appointed Mr. Saving for a second term as a public trustee of the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds.

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