Speaker biographies

Philip Ellis joined the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in 2002 and is currently a senior analyst in the health and human resources division. He was one of the primary analysts of proposals for a Medicare drug benefit, and he wrote a report explaining the assumptions and methods the CBO used in determining the effects of that legislation. His work has covered a variety of health care topics including disease management, Medicaid, and Medicare reform. Mr. Ellis also recently wrote a report on consumer-directed health plans and their potential effects on health spending and outcomes. Prior to joining the CBO, he worked on Medicare reform and other health care issues at the Treasury Department and in the office of the assistant secretary for planning and evaluation at the Department of Health and Human Services.

Gary Claxton is a vice president and the director of the Health Care Marketplace Project at the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. The project provides information, research, and analysis about trends in the health care market and about policy proposals that relate to health insurance reform and our changing health care system. Prior to joining the Foundation, Mr. Claxton worked as a senior researcher at the Institute for Health Care Research and Policy at Georgetown University, where his research focused on health insurance and health care financing. From March 1997 until January 2001, Mr. Claxton was the deputy assistant secretary for health policy at the Department of Health and Human Services, where he advised the secretary on such health policy issues as improving access to health insurance, Medicare reform, the administration of Medicaid, financing prescription drugs, expanding patient rights, and health care privacy. He has also been a consultant for the Lewin Group, a special deputy in the office of the assistant secretary for planning and evaluation, an insurance analyst for the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, and a health policy analyst for the American Association of Retired Persons.

Roger Feldman is the Blue Cross Professor of Health Insurance and professor of economics at the University of Minnesota. His 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. He is currently evaluating the effect of consumer-directed health plans on health care use 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, Mr. Feldman directed one of the four national research centers sponsored by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). He advised CMS on the design of a demonstration of competitive pricing for Medicare M+C plans and recently provided advice to the assistant secretary of health and human services for planning and evaluation 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. He has been a consultant to the U.S. Department of Justice and several state regulatory agencies regarding health plan mergers and ownership changes.

Thomas P. Miller is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he researches health policy, with particular emphasis information transparency, health insurance regulation, and consumer-driven health care. He is also a member of the National Advisory Council of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Before joining AEI, Mr. Miller served for three years as senior health economist for the Joint Economic Committee, where he organized a series of hearings focusing on promising reforms in private health care markets and drafted several social security reform bills. He also has been director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute and director of economic policy studies at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Mr. Miller’s writing has appeared in such publications as Health Affairs, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Reader’s Digest, National Review, the Journal of Law and Contemporary Problems, Regulation, and Cato Journal. He has testified before various Congressional committees on issues such as Medicare prescription drug benefits, medical savings accounts, and tax credits for health insurance.

Stephen T. Parente is an associate professor of finance and director of the Medical Industry Leadership Institute in the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. His areas of research are health economics, health insurance, medical technology evaluation, and health information technology. He has extensive experience directing empirical analyses using primary and secondary databases--especially administrative databases such as those for Medicare and health insurer data--for health policy research. He has consulted for UnitedHealth Group, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Johnson and Johnson, Medtronic, Pfizer, Merck, Johns Hopkins Hospital, and various government agencies. Mr. Parente recently concluded several studies on topics such as the impact of Medicare HMO market exit on elderly patients, identifying patterns of controlled substance misuse within health plans as a patient safety tool, and the impact of consumer health benefit knowledge on medical care demand and cost of the elderly. Prior to joining the University of Minnesota faculty, Mr. Parente was a legislative fellow in the U.S. Senate during the George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations’ health reform initiatives.
 
Anthony T. Lo Sasso is an associate professor and senior research scientist in the division of health policy and administration at the School of Public Health and the Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He was awarded the 2005 AcademyHealth Article of the Year Award for examining the impact of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program on uninsurance among children and the extent to which public coverage may have crowded out private coverage of children. Mr. Lo Sasso has received two R01 grants, one from the National Institute of Mental Health to examine the impact of an expansion of mental health benefits on cost and quality of care at a Fortune 50 manufacturing firm, and another from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to extend the previous analysis of health insurance coverage by examining the extent to which the health care safety net has improved children’s health over time. More recently, he has been studying the nascent consumer-driven health care movement and its potential impact on employer-sponsored health insurance and employee health. Mr. Lo Sasso is also keenly interested in how government policies affect private sector decisions and health outcomes and how community rating regulations in state non-group health insurance markets affect non-group health insurance coverage and uninsurance.

Speaker biographies