Speaker biographies

Joseph Antos is the Wilson H. Taylor Scholar in Health Care and Retirement Policy at AEI. He also is a commissioner of the Maryland Health Services Cost Review Commission and an adjunct professor at the School of Public Health of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Mr. Antos’s research focuses on the economics of health policy, including Medicare reform, health insurance regulation, and the uninsured. He is the editor with Alice Rivlin of Restoring Fiscal Sanity 2007: The Health Spending Challenge (Brookings Institution Press, 2007). Before joining AEI, Mr. Antos was assistant director for health and human resources at the Congressional Budget Office, and he held senior positions in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Office of Management and Budget, and the President’s Council of Economic Advisers.

Roger Feldman is the Blue Cross Professor of Health Insurance and Professor of Economics at the University of Minnesota. His research examines 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 saving 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 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 for planning and evaluation at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on the potential for health savings accounts to increase the number of people with insurance 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 for 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.

Michael Morrisey is a professor of health economics and health insurance at the School of Public Health of the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He is director of the Lister Hill Center for Health Policy, an endowed research center at the university. Mr. Morrisey’s research interests have largely focused on employer-sponsored health insurance and the effects of legislation and regulation on health and health care. Recent work has examined the effects of gasoline prices, beer taxes and graduated driver’s license programs on motor vehicle fatalities, the effects of medical malpractice reforms on health insurance premiums, and the health economics labor market. His new textbook, Health Insurance, was published by the Health Administration Press earlier this year. Mr. Morrisey is the author of the AEI Press book Cost Shifting in Health Care: Separating Evidence from Rhetoric (2000). He is a fellow at the Employee Benefits Research Institute, a member of several editorial boards, and the former secretary/treasurer of the International Health Economics Association.

Mark V. Pauly is the Bendheim Professor in the Department of Health Care Management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is a professor of Health Care Systems, Insurance and Risk Management, and Business and Public Policy at the Wharton School and a professor of economics at the University of Pennsylvania. A former commissioner of the Physician Payment Review Commission, Mr. Pauly has served on the advisory committee to the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality and on the Medicare Technical Advisory Panel. He currently serves on the national advisory committees for the National Institutes of Health National Center for Research Resources, the National Academy of Sciences’ Committee to Study the Veterinary Workforce, and the National Vaccine Advisory Committee and is an active member of the Institute of Medicine. Mr. Pauly is a co-editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Health Care Finance and Economics and an associate editor of the Journal of Risk and Uncertainty.

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 to 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. Mr. Thomas was elected chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee in January 2001 and served until January 2007. He 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. Before his election as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Mr. 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.

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