Arnold Milstein, M.D., M.P.H., (Planning Committee Chair), is Medical Director of the Pacific Business Group on Health (PBGH) and Chief Physician at Mercer Health & Benefits. PBGH is the largest employer healthcare purchasing coalition in the United States. His work and publications focus on healthcare purchasing strategy, the psychology of clinical performance improvement, and clinical innovations that reduce total healthcare spending. He cofounded both the Leapfrog Group and the Consumer-Purchaser Disclosure Project. He heads performance measurement activities for both initiatives and is a Congressional MedPAC Commissioner. The New England Journal of Medicine’s series on employer sponsored health insurance described him as a “pioneer” in efforts to advance quality of care. He was selected for the highest annual award of the National Business Group on Health (NBGH), for nationally distinguished innovation in healthcare cost reduction and quality gains. He was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and is a faculty member at University of California-San Francisco’s Institute for Health Policy Studies. He was educated at Harvard (B.A. economics), Tufts (M.D.), and UC Berkeley (M.P.H. health services evaluation and planning).

Kathleen Buto, M.P.A., is Vice President for Health Policy, Government Affairs, at Johnson & Johnson (J&J). She has responsibility for providing policy analysis and developing positions on a wide range of issues, including the Medicare drug benefit, government reimbursement, coverage of new technologies, and regulatory requirements. In addition to reviewing how federal, state, and international government policies affect J&J products and customers, she is responsible for helping to identify areas of opportunity for J&J to take leadership in shaping healthcare policy. Prior to joining J&J, Kathy was a senior health adviser at the Congressional Budget Office, helping to develop the cost models for the Medicare drug benefit. Before that, she spent more than 18 years in senior positions at the Health Care Financing Administration, including Deputy Director, Center for Health Plans and Providers, and Associate Administrator for Policy. In these positions, she headed the policy, reimbursement, research, and coverage functions for the agency, as well as managing Medicare’s fee-for-service and managed care operations. Kathy received her B.A. from Douglass College and her master’s in public administration from Harvard University.

Robert S. Galvin, M.D., M.B.A., is Director of Global Healthcare for General Electric (GE). He oversees the design and performance of GE’s health programs, which total over $3 billion annually, and is responsible for GE’s medical services, encompassing over 220 medical clinics in more than 20 countries. Dr. Galvin completed his undergraduate work at the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated magna cum laude and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He also received his M.D. degree at the University of Pennsylvania and was elected to Alpha Omega Alpha. He received an MBA in health care management from Boston University School of Management in 1995. In his current role, Dr. Galvin has focused on issues of market-based health policy and financing, with a special interest in quality measurement and improvement. He has been a leader in pushing for public release of performance information and reform of the payment system. He was a member of the Strategic Framework Board of the National Quality Forum and currently sits on the board of the National Committee for Quality Assurance. He is a founder of both the Leapfrog Group and Bridges to Excellence. He is also a member of the Advisory Board of the Council of Health Care Economics and the IOM Committee on Redesigning Health Insurance Benefits, Payments, and Performance Improvement Programs. Dr. Galvin’s work has received awards from the National Health Care Purchasing Institute, the National Business Group on Health, and the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship. He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, and his work has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine and Health Affairs. He is Adjunct Professor of Medicine and Health Policy at Yale where he leads a seminar on the private sector at the School of Medicine and the MBA program at the School of Management.

Paul B. Ginsburg, Ph.D., is President of the Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC). Founded in 1995 by Dr. Ginsburg, HSC conducts research to inform policy makers and other audiences about changes in organization of financing and delivery of care and their effects on people. HSC is widely known for the objectivity and technical quality of its research and its success in communicating it to policy makers and the media as well as to the research community. Ginsburg is particularly known for his understanding of healthcare markets and health care costs. In 2007, for the fifth time, Dr. Ginsburg was named by Modern Healthcare as one of the 100 most powerful persons in health care. Dr. Ginsburg served as the founding Executive Director of the predecessor to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission. Widely regarded as highly influential, the Commission developed the Medicare physician payment reform proposal that was enacted by the Congress in 1989. Dr. Ginsburg was a Senior Economist at RAND and served as Deputy Assistant Director at the Congressional Budget Office. Before that, he served on the faculties of Duke and Michigan State Universities. He earned his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University.

Eric Jensen, M.B.A., is an Engagement Manager in McKinsey & Company’s Washington, DC, Office and a member of McKinsey’s payer and provider practice. Since joining the firm in August 2001, Jensen has helped clients across a variety of industries with top strategic and operational issues. Within the healthcare sector, Jensen has advised hospital and pharmaceutical clients with strategic planning efforts, service line growth strategies, and game theory based strategy development. His interest in economics has extended into work within the consumer goods sector where he helped a major multinational client use microeconomic modeling to evaluate strategic options, competitive response, and likely future industry evolution. As of March 2008, Jensen joined McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) as a Fellow to help lead an ongoing review of the U.S. health system and healthcare economics. In this role, he has conducted briefings with think tanks, policy makers, and public and private sector executives on the economic incentives underpinning healthcare costs in the United States. The results of his work were recently published in the MGI report, Accounting for the Cost of U.S. Health Care: A New Look at Why Americans Spend More and has been featured in articles in Newsweek and the Washington Post. Jensen is now leading an initiative investigating the drivers of variation in healthcare costs at a U.S. state level. Jensen received an M.B.A. with high distinction from the University of Michigan. He also graduated summa cum laude with a B.S. degree in chemical engineering from Ohio State University.

James E. Mathews, Ph.D., came to MedPAC in the spring of 2007 from the Department of Health and Human Services, where he served as the deputy to the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health Policy for the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation. He has held a variety of management and analytic positions throughout his career in health policy, having served at the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the Prospective Payment Assessment Commission (one of MedPAC’s predecessor commissions), the Office of Management and Budget, and the Health Care Financing Administration (now CMS). Prior to becoming MedPAC’s Deputy Director in 2008, Jim focused on hospice, end of life, and other post-acute care.

Nancy H. Nielsen, M.D., Ph.D., an internist from Buffalo, New York, became the 163rd president of the American Medical Association (AMA) in June 2008. Dr. Nielsen was speaker of the AMA House of Delegates (HOD) from 2003 to 2007 and vice speaker for the three preceding years. She was a delegate from New York and previously served two terms on the AMA Council on Scientific Affairs, where she helped formulate policy positions for AMA-HOD debates on the diagnosis and treatment of depression, alcoholism among women, Alzheimer’s disease, priorities in clinical preventive services, colorectal cancer screening, asthma control, nicotine content of cigarettes, and medication safety. Among other AMA positions, Dr. Nielsen has served as a member of the National Patient Safety Foundation Board of Directors, the Commission for the Prevention of Youth Violence, and the Task Force on Quality and Patient Safety. She is the AMA representative on many quality initiatives, including the National Quality Forum, the AMA Physician Consortium for Performance Improvement, the Ambulatory Care Quality Alliance, and the Quality Alliance Steering Committee. She served on the Institute of Medicine’s Roundtable on Evidence-Based Medicine. Dr. Nielsen was speaker of the Medical Society of the State of New York House of Delegates, and a member of the board of directors of the Medical Liability Mutual Insurance Company—one of the largest malpractice carriers in the country. She was also president of her county medical society and her hospital’s medical staff. Dr. Nielsen holds a Ph.D. in microbiology and received her M.D. from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. She is Clinical Professor of Medicine and Senior Associate Dean for Medical Education at her alma mater, and has served as a trustee of the SUNY system. She was a member of the board of directors of Kaleida Health—a five-hospital system in western New York—and was chief medical officer of a large regional health plan in the Buffalo area.

Steven D. Pearson, M.D., M.Sc., FRCP, is President of the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) at Harvard Medical School and Senior Fellow at America’s Health Insurance Plans in Washington, DC. Dr. Pearson’s work examines the scientific and ethical foundations of evidence-based policy making in health care. His published work includes the book No Margin, No Mission: Health Care Organizations and the Quest for Ethical Excellence, published in 2003 by Oxford University Press. Dr. Pearson is the current Vice Chair of the Medicare Evidence Development and Coverage Advisory Committee, is a member of the Academy-Health Methods Council, and also serves on the management committee of the International Society for Priority Setting in Health Care. In 2004, he was awarded an Atlantic Fellowship to pursue policy studies at the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) in London, England. He returned to the United States to serve from 2005–2006 as Special Advisor, Technology and Coverage Policy, at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. In 2006, Dr. Pearson founded the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER). ICER produces appraisals of the clinical effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of medical innovations, with the goal of providing new information to decision makers intent on improving the value of healthcare services.

Gail Shearer, M.P.P., rejoined Consumers Union in December 1985. For the first 17 years, she wrote analyses of various health policy issues ranging from medical savings accounts to the Clinton health care proposal. For the past 2 years, she has served as Director of Consumer Reports Best Buy Drugs. She spent 9 years at the Federal Trade Commission in various policy planning and consumer protection roles. Before joining the FTC, she worked for Consumers Union in both the headquarters in Mount Vernon, New York and in the Washington office. Her first project (1974) was to analyze the various national health insurance bills under consideration in Congress.

Reed V. Tuckson, M.D., was appointed Executive Vice President and Chief of Medical Affairs in December 2006. Dr. Tuckson joined UnitedHealth Group in 2000 as Senior Vice President, Consumer Health and Medical Care Advancement. Prior to joining UnitedHealth Group, Dr. Tuckson worked as Senior Vice President, Professional Standards, for the American Medical Association (AMA). He also served as president of an academic health science center, and was formerly Commissioner of Public Health for the District of Columbia.