At the White House summit on health care reform, President Obama said, "If there is a way of getting this done where we're driving down costs and people are getting health insurance at an affordable rate, and have choice of doctor, have flexibility in terms of their plans, and we could do that entirely through the market, I'd be happy to do it that way."
Are there free-market reforms that can meet those goals? Can the market reform health care?
Bio
Tom G. Donlan
Thomas G. Donlan is the Editorial Page Editor at Barron's National Business and Financial Weekly. For fifteen years, he has been writing in his Barron's columns about the power of capitalism to solve society's toughest problems. One of America's best-known writers on issues related to the economy, politics, and investing, he is a frequently cited expert and guest in the nation's major media.
Douglas Holtz-Eakin
Douglas Holtz-Eakin was a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics from 2007 to March 2008. He was the director of the Congressional Budget Office (2003-05). He also served for 18 months as chief economist in the President's Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush (2001-02) and for two years as senior staff economist in President George H. W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers (1989-90).
Dr. Holtz-Eakin is the recipient of the 2006 Morris and Edna Zale Award for Outstanding Achievement in Policy Research and Public Service.
Stephen T. Parente
Stephen T. Parente is an Associate Professor in the Department of Finance in the Carlson School of Management at University of Minnesota where he specializes in health economics, health insurance, medical technology evaluation and health information technology. He has extensive experience directing empirical analyses utilizing primary and secondary data bases, and is acknowledged as a national expert on using administrative databases, particularly Medicare and health insurer data, for health policy research.
He has served as a consultant to several of the largest health care organizations including: UnitedHealth Group, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Johnson and Johnson, Medtronic, Pfizer, Merck, Johns Hopkins Hospital, and various government agencies. He is currently the principal investigator for several projects evaluating the impact of consumer-directed health plans.
Mark V. Pauly
Mark Pauly is the Bendheim Professor of Health Care Systems, Business and Public Policy, Insurance and Risk Management, and Economics, at the University of Pennsylvania. He has been at the Wharton School since 1983. Before that, he was on the faculty at Northwestern University.
He has served as Executive Director of the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics and Vice Dean for Doctoral Programs at the University of Pennsylvania. In addition, he has served on state commissions to study insurance and on Institute of Medicine panels looking at accountability in Medicare, vaccine financing, and substance abuse treatment. He was commissioner on the Physician Payment Review Commission, and twice served as a member of a technical review panel to study methods for forecasting Medicare's future costs.
Richard L. Scott
Richard Scott is considered one of America's foremost health care entrepreneurs. Scott is the founder of two health care providers, Columbia Hospital Corporation and Solantic Corporation. He currently serves as Chairman of Solantic Corporation.
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