Henry Aaron has been the Bruce and Virginia MacLaury Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution's Economic Studies Program since 1968, and served as director of the program from 1990 to 1996.
Aaron was a professor of Economics at the University of Maryland from 1967 to 1989.
He served as assistant secretary for planning and evaluation at the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare from 1977 to 1978, and was chairman of the Advisory Council on Social Security in 1979.
Aaron was a 1996-7 Guggenheim Fellow at the Stanford University Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences. He is a member of the Board of Directors at Abt Associates and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and a member of the Institute of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the advisory committee of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, and the Harvard Medical and Dental Schools visiting committee.
He has also served as Board chairman and vice president of the National Academy of Social Insurance; vice president of the American Economic Association; president of the Association of Public Policy and Management; and Board member of the College Retirement Equity Fund at Georgetown University.
Recent publications include "Medicare Reform: Options, Tradeoffs, Opportunities" (with Jeanne Lambrew and Patrick Healy); "Using Taxes To Reform Health Insurance: Pitfalls and Promises" (edited, with Leonard E. Burman); and "Can We Say No: The Challenge of Rationing Health Care" (with Melissa Cox and William B. Schwartz).
However many books you read on health policy, make sure that Chaos and Organization in Health Care by Tom Lee and James Mongan is one of them. Official release is still a couple of months away, but I saw a pre-publication copy. This book is a great read. It is informed by the experience of two physicians who are involved in health care administration and have been at the center of policy debates for decades. It is devoid of ideological cant, clearly written, and replete with vivid personal experiences. It maps a road to an improved health care delivery system… Read more
"I am surprised that you are surprised. I have been writing for more than a year that going for a large bill is a mistake for a whole host of reasons. Those pieces have appeared (twice) in the New Republic On Line, in op-eds, and on the Brookings web site. You can check them out at http://www.brookings.edu/experts/aaronh.aspx . Of course, it is vain and silly, to boot, to assume that everyone has read what one has written -- people have more and better things to do!! -- but I have been arguing for a couple of years, against what has… Read more
Way, way too much is being made of this remark on substantive grounds. Doug simply put in words the numbers in the CBO and JCT cost estimates of HR 3200. HR 3200 raises spending more than it raises taxes; so, it raises the LEVEL of the curve and deficits over the next ten years. That simply says that more work remains to be done either to cut spending or to raise taxes to make the plan deficit neutral. Doug's comment says nothing about the impact over the long-haul of HR3200 on the SLOPE of the curve, which depends on reforms… Read more
The pay-go rules should not be waived for health reform. This is not a covert (or overt!) way of opposing the extension of coverage to the uninsured--we should cover as many of the uninsured as politically possible, and we should pay the taxes to do it. But it is a way of saying that the nation faces potentially lethal long-term budget problems. Yes, we are in a serious recession that makes increased deficits now not just tolerable, but imperative; but this recession, like all others, will one day end. And when it does, growth of public expenditures as a share… Read more
To quibble now about whether expanding Medicaid is the best way to extend health insurance is rather like arguing that a fireman should not break some windows in order to direct water on the flames. Unemployment is rocketing up. People are losing insurance coverage. The collapse of state revenues threatens to prevent them from expanding or even maintaining Medicaid coverage. State fiscal duress is forcing tragic and short-sighted cuts in other public services. Increased federal support to help states serve those currently eligible for Medicaid and newly unemployed beneficiaries (along with assistance for those who are COBRA-eligible) is just about… Read more
The Baucus program is a well-crafted menu of steps to begin the reform the health care system in the United States. The word 'program' descrubes the agenda better than 'plan' because the elements of this program can be enacted together or sequentially, as political will and economic means are available. Given the avalanche of serious challenges facing the new Congress and president, such a 'modular' approach has a much greater chance for success than does the 'one-big-bill' approach, which has failed repeatedly in the past and whose chances of success this time have to be put at well below 50-50.… Read more
Related Link: http://www.brookings.edu/experts/aaronh.aspx
