Early life and education
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Stuart H. Altman | |
|---|---|
| Born | August 8, 1937 |
| Nationality | American |
| Citizenship | U.S. |
| Spouse | Diane Altman (née Kleinberg) |
| Academic career | |
| Institution | Brandeis University |
| Field | Healthcare economics |
| Alma mater | CCNY, UCLA |
Stuart H. Altman [1] [2] [3] (born August 8, 1937) is an American economist whose research interests are primarily in the area of federal and state health policy. He is the Sol C. Chaikin Professor of National Health Policy at Brandeis University, in the Heller School for Social Policy and Management. Altman is considered one of the most influential people in American healthcare. [4] He served as interim president of Brandeis from 1990 to 1991. [5]
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Among his professional achievements, he served 12 years as chairman of the congressionally legislated Prospective Payment Assessment Commission (ProPac) formed to advise Congress and the administration on the functioning of the Medicare Diagnostic Related Group (DRG) Hospital Payment System and other system reforms. [6] He is also chair of the Health Industry Forum which brings together diverse group leaders from across the health care field to develop solutions for critical problems facing the healthcare system.
Altman has advised presidents Nixon, Clinton and Obama. [7] From 1997 to 1999, he served on President Bill Clinton's National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare, a 14-member commission tasked with providing the president with recommendations to help Medicare remain tenable.
Stuart is co-author of a book on the history of healthcare in the United States, Policies for an Aging Society. The book records information gathered from experts in public and health policy, economics, law, and management to identify the salient issues and explore realistic options. From positions ranging from liberal to conservative, the contributors take a wide view of the philosophical, economic, and programmatic aspects of the social protection programs for elderly Americans. They ask broad questions and propose integrated conceptions of how our society can best provide for the needs of its aging population. Altman co-authored another book with David Shactman titled Power, Politics, and Universal Health Care (2011), in which the history of healthcare in the United States during the 20th century and into the 21st is explained, ultimately putting Obama's healthcare plan into historical perspective.
In 2008, Altman was appointed to the board of directors for Inspiris, a privately held, for-profit health care management company. [8] He has also served on the boards of Lincare Holdings and Aveta. Altman is also a director on the not-for-profit boards of EmblemHealth and Tufts-New England Medical Cente r in Boston. [4]
In 2012, Altman was appointed by Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick to head the Massachusetts Health Policy Commission. [9]
He is the older brother of Edward Altman and Ellen Altman-Stein.
Mark Barr McClellan is the director of the Robert J Margolis Center for Health Policy and the Margolis Professor of Business, Medicine and Health Policy at Duke University. Formerly, he was a senior fellow and director of the Health Care Innovation and Value Initiative at the Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform at The Brookings Institution, in Washington, D.C. McClellan served as commissioner of the United States Food and Drug Administration under President George W. Bush from 2002 through 2004, and subsequently as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services from 2004 through 2006.
The Heller School for Social Policy and Management is one of the four graduate schools of Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. It is consistently ranked as one of the top ten schools of social policy and one of the top 50 graduate schools of public affairs in America since 2013 by the U.S. News & World Report.
Families USA is a nonprofit, nonpartisan consumer health advocacy and policy organization.
Uwe Ernst Reinhardt was a professor of political economy at Princeton University and held several positions in the healthcare industry. Reinhardt was a prominent scholar in health care economics and a frequent speaker and author on subjects ranging from the war in Iraq to the future of Medicare.
Charles N. ("Chip") Kahn III is the president and chief executive officer of the Federation of American Hospitals (FAH), whose member companies own nearly 20 percent of all American hospital beds. Kahn and the FAH represent their members on health policy issues like health care reform and hospital care quality improvement.
Christine K. Cassel is a leading expert in geriatric medicine, medical ethics and quality of care. She is planning dean of the new Kaiser Permanente School of Medicine. Until March 2016, she was president and CEO of the National Quality Forum. Previously, Cassel served as president and CEO of the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) and the ABIM Foundation.
Samuel Osiah Thier was professor of Medicine and Health Care Policy at Harvard University. He earned his medical degree at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University in 1960. He previously served as the president of Brandeis University from 1991–1994 and the president of the Massachusetts General Hospital from 1994-96.
Donald M. Berwick is a former Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Prior to his work in the administration, he was President and Chief Executive Officer of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement a not-for-profit organization.
The history of health care reform in the United States has spanned many decades with health care reform having been the subject of political debate since the early part of the 20th century. Recent reforms remain an active political issue. Alternative reform proposals were offered by both of the major candidates in the 2008, 2016, and 2020 presidential elections.
The healthcare reform debate in the United States has been a political issue focusing upon increasing medical coverage, decreasing costs, insurance reform, and the philosophy of its provision, funding, and government involvement.
The public health insurance option, also known as the public insurance option or the public option, is a proposal to create a government-run health insurance agency that would compete with other private health insurance companies within the United States. The public option is not the same as publicly funded health care, but was proposed as an alternative health insurance plan offered by the government. The public option was initially proposed for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, but was removed after independent Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman threatened a filibuster.
Healthcare rationing in the United States exists in various forms. Access to private health insurance is rationed on price and ability to pay. Those unable to afford a health insurance policy are unable to acquire a private plan except by employer-provided and other job-attached coverage, and insurance companies sometimes pre-screen applicants for pre-existing medical conditions. Applicants with such conditions may be declined cover or pay higher premiums and/or have extra conditions imposed such as a waiting period.
There were a number of different health care reforms proposed during the Obama administration. Key reforms address cost and coverage and include obesity, prevention and treatment of chronic conditions, defensive medicine or tort reform, incentives that reward more care instead of better care, redundant payment systems, tax policy, rationing, a shortage of doctors and nurses, intervention vs. hospice, fraud, and use of imaging technology, among others.
Bundled payment is the reimbursement of health care providers "on the basis of expected costs for clinically-defined episodes of care." It has been described as "a middle ground" between fee-for-service reimbursement and capitation, given that risk is shared between payer and provider. Bundled payments have been proposed in the health care reform debate in the United States as a strategy for reducing health care costs, especially during the Obama administration (2009–2016). Commercial payers have shown interest in bundled payments in order to reduce costs. In 2012, it was estimated that approximately one-third of the United States healthcare reimbursement used bundled methodology.
The Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) was to be a fifteen-member United States government agency created in 2010 by sections 3403 and 10320 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act which was to have the explicit task of achieving specified savings in Medicare without affecting coverage or quality. Under previous and current law, changes to Medicare payment rates and program rules are recommended by MedPAC but require an act of Congress to take effect. The system creating IPAB granted IPAB the authority to make changes to the Medicare program with the Congress being given the power to overrule the agency's decisions through supermajority vote. The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 repealed IPAB before it could take effect.
Stephen L. Ondra is the chief medical adviser for the MITRE Corporation’s work as operator of the CMS Alliance to Modernize Healthcare federally funded research and development center. Ondra advises all HHS organizations to advance private insurance markets, Medicare and Medicaid, value-based payments, and healthcare quality. Ondra was most recently CEO of Cygnus-AI Inc., a company specializing in artificial intelligence and clinical decision support tools for diagnostic radiology. He was also founder and chief executive officer of North Star Health Care Consulting, and served on the board of directors of Triple-S Management and electroCore. A neurosurgeon and neuroscientist, Ondra has also served in senior positions in the Federal government, having a role in health reform efforts and the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. He advises corporations, provider organizations and early-stage start-ups on the transition to value-based care and health IT strategy.
The Path to Prosperity: Restoring America's Promise was the Republican Party's budget proposal for the federal government of the United States in the fiscal year 2012. It was succeeded in March 2012 by "The Path to Prosperity: A Blueprint for American Renewal", the Republican budget proposal for 2013. Representative Paul Ryan, Chairman of the House Budget Committee, played a prominent public role in drafting and promoting both The Path to Prosperity proposals, and they are therefore often referred to as the Ryan budget, Ryan plan or Ryan proposal.
Rashi Fein was an American health economist termed "a father of Medicare" in the United States and "an architect of Medicare", was Professor of Economics of Medicine, Emeritus, in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and the author of the book Medical Care, Medical Costs: The Search for a Health Insurance Policy.
Dan Mendelson is an American businessman and healthcare consultant who founded Avalere Health, a Washington, D.C.-based strategic advisory company, after serving in the Clinton White House. His opinions have been cited in The New York Times,The Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio, and Bloomberg, among other news outlets. He is the author of numerous papers and several editorials.
Helen L. Smits was a health policy influencer and advocate in the United States, and lent her voice to several healthcare initiatives abroad. Most notably, she was a recipient of the Fulbright scholarship and served under the Carter and Clinton administrations. She also held positions in government organizations including the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Healthcare Financing Administration.
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