Type: Public event
Host: Ford School

U.S. health policy directions: Two roads diverged in a yellow wood

Speaker

Len Nichols, Professor of Health Policy at George Mason University

Date & time

Oct 21, 2020, 11:30 am-12:45 pm EDT

Location

This is a Virtual Event.

Free and open to the public. View the event on YouTube here.

Join the conversation: #policytalks

Join us for an event on the future of health policy in the United States with Professor Len Nichols. Jonathan Cohn, Senior National Correspondent at HuffPost, will offer some remarks following Professor Nichols' presentation, and Paula Lantz, James B. Hudak Professor of Health Policy at the Ford School, will moderate the discussion.

From the speakers' bios: 

Len M. Nichols is a non-resident Fellow of the Health Policy Center of the Urban Institute and Professor Emeritus of Health Policy at George Mason University. He has been intimately involved in health reform debates, policy development, and communication with the media and policy makers for 25+ years, after he was Senior Advisor for Health Policy at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in the Clinton Administration. Since that time he has testified frequently before Congress and state legislatures, published extensively and spoken to a wide range of health care and insurance organizations and associations, boards of directors, and health policy leadership forums around the country.

After OMB, Len was a Principal Research Associate at the Urban Institute, Vice President of the Center for Studying Health System Change, and Director of the Health Policy Program atthe New America Foundation. In addition to his positions at GMU Len is on the Board of Directors of the National Committee for Quality Assurance and in 2015 was appointed by the Comptroller General to serve on the Physician-Focused Payment Model Technical Advisory Committee (PTAC), which advises the Secretary of HHS on Medicare payment policies. Len was an Innovation Advisor to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation at CMS in 2012, and recently been the Principal Investigator on PCMH evaluation studies as well as in more general studies of how to use payment and delivery reform to achieve triple aim and health equity goals. Recently he has helped develop an economic model to incentivize sustainable investments in upstream social determinants of health, and is actively engaged in teaching that model and attendant processes to communities around the country. Len received a B.A. from Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas, an M.A. in Economics from the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Illinois. He lives in Arlington, Virginia, with his wife Nora Super of the Milken Institute.

Jonathan Cohn is Senior National Correspondent at HuffPost. He writes about politics and policy with a focus on social welfare. He is also the author of Sick: The Untold Story of America's Health Care Crisis -- and the People Who Pay the Price. Jonathan worked previously at the New Republic and American Prospect, and has written for the Atlantic, New York Times Magazine, and Self. His journalism has won awards from the Sidney Hillman Foundation, the Association of Health Care Journalists, World Hunger Year, and the National Women's Political Caucus.