Massachusetts Comes to Michigan: Lessons about Health Care Reform from Business Leaders

Date & time

Feb 11, 2013, 4:00-5:30 pm EST

Location

Weill Hall

Free and open to the public: Reception to follow. The Center for Healthcare Research & Transformation (CHRT) will bring together key Massachusetts and Michigan business leaders along with University of Michigan experts to explore lessons from Massachusetts' experience with health reform and what may be ahead as the Affordable Care Act is implemented in Michigan. Join us for an interactive panel discussion including:

Thomas Buchmueller Waldo O. Hildebrand Professor of Risk Management and Insurance, U-M Ross School of Business Tom Buchmueller is a health economist whose research focuses on the economics of health insurance and related public policy issues. His recent work has examined the relationship between employer-sponsored insurance and labor market outcomes, interactions between the public sector and private insurance markets and consumer demand for health insurance. Rob Fowler President and CEO of Small Business Association of Michigan Rob Fowler is President and CEO of the Small Business Association of Michigan. Having joined the staff of SBAM in 2000, he served for three years as the Vice President of the subsidiary corporation Small Business Insurance Services. He assumed his current position in July of 2003. The Small Business Association of Michigan was founded in 1969 and today serves over 18,000 member companies from all of Michigan's 83 counties. The organization's mission is to help Michigan small businesses succeed by promoting entrepreneurship, leveraging buying power and engaging in political advocacy. Before coming to Michigan, Mr. Fowler served as the Executive Director of the Council of Smaller Enterprises (COSE) in Cleveland Ohio from 1995 to 2000. COSE is the small business arm of the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce which was the country's largest Chamber of Commerce. Prior to that he was a lobbyist for the Indiana Chamber of Commerce for ten years where he also served as the Executive Director of the Indiana Small Business Council. Rob worked for the Indiana Lt. Governor for two years before his time with the Indiana Chamber. In his capacity as President of SBAM he is a registered lobbyist representing small business before the Michigan legislature. He also serves as the President of the Small Business Foundation of Michigan a wholly owned subsidiary of SBAM. In addition, Mr. Fowler serves as the Chairman of the Michigan Health Insurance Access Advisory Council, served as Chair of the Business Advisory Committee of the Michigan Hospital Association and the Association Advisory Council of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the National Small Business Association. He also served on the Transition Team for Governor Snyder and was recently appointed to the Board of the Michigan State Housing Development Authority. A graduate of Ball State University with a degree in Political Science, Rob and his wife Lisa live in Haslett with their son Reid and daughter Emma. In June of 2008 he was elected to his second four-year term on the Haslett Board of Education. Helen Levy Research Associate Professor, U-M Ford School of Public Policy Helen Levy is a Research Associate Professor at the Ford School as well as at Institute for Social Research and the Department of Health Policy in the School of Public Health. She is a Co-Investigator on the Health and Retirement Study, a long-running longitudinal study of health and economic dynamics at older ages. Her research interests include the causes and consequences of lacking health insurance, evaluation of public health insurance programs, and the role of health literacy in explaining disparities in health outcomes. Before coming to the University of Michigan she was an Assistant Professor at the Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies at the University of Chicago. She is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and served as a Senior Economist to the President's Council of Economic Advisers in 2010–11. She received a Ph.D. in economics from Princeton. Rick Lord President and CEO of Associated Industries of Massachusetts Rick Lord is President and Chief Executive Officer of Associated Industries of Massachusetts (AIM). AIM is an employer service organization of more than 6,500 member companies. Mr. Lord joined AIM in 1991 and served as Executive Vice President for Legislative Policy where he was responsible for AIM's public policy advocacy on health care, economic development, taxation, worker's compensation and other issues of interest to employers in the Commonwealth. Prior to joining AIM, Mr. Lord served as Chief of Staff for the Committee on Ways and Means of the Massachusetts House of Representatives. The Committee is responsible for all legislation involving state funds and revenues, including the Commonwealth's annual budget and all tax related matters. Mr. Lord was employed by the Committee for six years, serving as the Budget Director before being promoted to the Chief of Staff position. Before entering public service, Mr. Lord also worked in financial positions at General Electric Company and McCormack and Dodge, a Massachusetts-based software company. He currently serves on numerous boards, including Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Boston, the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation, the Massachusetts Hospital Association, the Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative, the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education, the New England Center for Children, Inc. and the Massachusetts Association for Mental Health among others. He also chairs the Massachusetts Workforce Training Fund Advisory Panel. He is a former member of the Board of Directors of the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority. Mr. Lord is a 1977 Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Williams College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics and Psychology. Michael Widmer President of Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation Michael J. Widmer has been President of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation since 1992. He joined the Foundation in 1990 after more than 20 years of management and political experience in both the public and private sectors in Massachusetts. He held a variety of senior-level positions at Cabot Corporation between 1979 and 1990, first as Director of Public Affairs and later as Vice President for Human Resources. During the 1970s Mr. Widmer served with the Sargent administration as Special Assistant to the Secretary of Human Services and in the first Dukakis administration as the Governor's Director of Communications and Deputy Chief Secretary. Earlier in his career Mr. Widmer worked as a reporter for United Press International. A cum laude graduate of Princeton University, Mr. Widmer holds M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in political science from Harvard University. Presenting in an interactive format, the panelists will address these issues, take questions from the live audience as well as through a Twitter feed for the webcast participants.

Explore how Chapter 58, Massachusetts' health reform legislation of 2006, was enacted and implemented with strong support and engagement from the business community.
Hear how business leaders were engaged in Massachusetts and the impact their involvement had on the overall law and implementation.
Learn the impact the Massachusetts law had on the overall business and state economic climate and how aspects of this experience might be relevant for Michigan.
Study why it may prove beneficial for the Michigan business community to be similarly engaged as the state moves forward with plans to comply with the Affordable Care Act.

This event will be live web-streamed; please visit the CHRT website at www.chrt.org on the day of the event to join our live webcast. Sponsored by: The Center for Healthcare Research & Transformation (CHRT) Co-sponsored by: Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy (CLOSUP) U-M Ford School of Public Policy, U-M SPH Griffith Leadership Center U-M Ross School of Business The University of Michigan Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation (IHPI) re:group In addition to our co-sponsors this symposium is made possible by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and staff support from Community Catalyst.