PROMINENT HEALTH EXPERTS WHO SUPPORT PUBLIC INSURANCE OPTION AVAILABLE FOR INTERVIEW

As the health reform debate heats up in Congress, the Institute for America’s Future today released the names of prominent health care experts and economists available for analysis and interviews. All the experts favor a public health insurance option to compete with private plans, but they are good sources on all developing issues related to the health care debate.

“Conservatives and health industry forces are putting forward their experts to attack the public insurance option,” said Diane Archer, director of the Institute for America’s Future Health Care Project. “We want to make sure the media has ready access to experts who see the public insurance option as critical to health reform and cost control. These experts don’t agree on everything, but they have helped shape key elements of reform – the public option, affordability, universal coverage, regulation of insurance companies and equal access to good benefits.”

Institute for America’s Future co-director Roger Hickey said that many of the 33 health experts listed recently published work directly relevant to the current health care debate, citing the following examples: Jacob Hacker, the first to put the public insurance option on the agenda, has an article about what America would look like without it in The New Republic. The Urban Institute’s John Holahan and Linda Blumberg released a new report on how a public insurance plan would increase competition and lower costs. The Economic Policy Institute’s Elise Gould wrote a new paper on the drawbacks of taxing public insurance. Hickey has an oped in Sunday’s New York Times opposing taxing health benefits.

A searchable list of experts, complete with photos, biographies and contact information is available at www.ourfuture.org/healthexperts [3]. Experts available to the media include:

--Gerard Anderson, Ph.D., director, Center for Hospital Finance and Management and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 410-955-3241, ganderso@jhsph.edu [4]

--Diane Archer, director, Institute for America’s Future Health Care Project, 212-866-0908, darcher@ourfuture.org [5]

--Valerie Arkoosh, MD, MPH, president-elect, National Physicians Alliance, 215-694-0885, valerie.arkoosh@npalliance.net [6]

--Dean Baker, co-director, Center for Economic and Policy Research, 202-293-5380 x114, baker@cepr.net [7]

--David Balto, senior fellow, Center for American Progress, 202-789-5424, dbalto@americanprogress.org [8]

--Robert Berenson, M.D., senior fellow, Urban Institute, 202-833-7200, rberenson@urban.org [9]

--Linda Bergthold, consultant, Stanford University, 831-462-1334, lbergthold@sbcglobal.net [10]

--Josh Bivens, economist, Economic Policy Institute, 202-755-8810, news@epi.org [11]

--Sam Blair, director, Main Street Alliance, 603-831-1835, sblair@mainstreetalliance.org [12]

--Linda Blumberg, Ph.D., senior fellow, The Urban Institute’s Health Policy Center, 202-261-5769, lblumberg@urban.org [13]

--E. Richard Brown, Ph.D., director, UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, erbrown@ucla.edu [14]

--Lisa Dubay, associate professor, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 410-502-0985, ldubay@jhsph.edu [15]

--Elise Gould, director of Health Policy Research, Economic Policy Institute, 202-755-8810, news@epi.org [11]

--Thomas Greaney, director, Center for Health Law Studies and law professor at St. Louis University; greanetl@slu.edu [16]

--Jacob Hacker, professor, Yale University, 914-372-2225, Jacob.hacker@yale.edu [17]

--Roger Hickey, co-director, Institute for America’s Future, 202-587-1604, hickey@ourfuture.org [18]

--John Holahan, director, The Urban Institute’s Health Policy Center, 202-261-5666, jholahan@urban.org [19]

--Ken Jacobs, chair, Institute for Research on Labor and Employment and UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education, 510-643-2621, kjacobs9@berkeley.edu [20]

--Timothy Jost, law professor, Washington and Lee University School of Law, 540-458-8510, jostt@wlu.edu [21]

--Richard Kirsch, national campaign manager, Health Care for America Now, 202-454-6196, rkirsch@healthcareforamericanow.org [22]

--Maggie Mahar, fellow, The Century Foundation, 202-293-5380 x114, healthbeat@tcf.org [23]

--Ted Marmor, professor, Yale School of Management and adjunct professor at Harvard John F. Kennedy School of Government, 203-432-3238, Theodore.marmor@yale.edu [24]

--Jim Morone, professor of Political Science and Urban Studies, Brown University, 401-863-1573, james_morone@brown.edu [25]

--Vivek Murthy, MD, MBA, president, Doctors for America and instructor, Harvard Medical School, 786-245-4550, vivekmurthy@post.harvard.edu [26]

--Jonathan Oberlander, assistant professor, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 919-843-8269, oberland@med.unc.edu [27]

--Frank Pasquale, law professor, Seton Hall University, 973-642-8485, pasquafa@shu.edu [28]

--Harold Pollack, associate professor, University of Chicago School of Social Service, 708-275-6841, haroldpollack@gmail.com [29]

--Karen Pollitz, project director, Health Policy Institute, Georgetown University, 202-687-3003, pollitzk@georgetown.edu [30]

--Robert Reich, professor, Goldman School of Public Policy, UC Berkeley, 510-642-0560, rreich@berkeley.edu [31]

--Mark Schlessinger, Ph.D., professor, Yale School of Public Health, 203-785-4619, mark.schlesinger@yale.edu [32]

--Jeanne Silver-Isenstadt, MD, Ph.D., executive director, National Physicians Alliance, 703-254-8972, jean@npalliance.org [33]

--Judith Stein, executive director, Center for Medicare Advocacy, 860-456-7790, jstein@medicareadvocacy.org [34]

--Joseph White, Ph.D., director, Center for Policy Studies and professor at Case Western Reserve University, 216-368-2426, jxw87@case.edu [35]

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**NOTE: A searchable list of experts, complete with expert photos, biographies and contact information is available at http://ourfuture.org/healthexperts.** [36]