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David Blumenthal, Obama Health Adviser and Director, Institute for Health Policy, Massachusetts General Hospital and Partners Health System

Biography provided by participant

David Blumenthal, M.D., M.P.P. is Director, Institute for Health Policy and Physician at The Massachusetts General Hospital/Partners HealthCare System in Boston, Massachusetts. He is also Samuel O. Thier Professor of Medicine and Professor of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School.

From 1987-1991 he was Senior Vice President at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital, a 720-bed Harvard teaching hospital. From 1981 to 1987 he was Executive Director of the Center for Health Policy and Management and Lecturer on Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. During the late 1970s, Dr. Blumenthal was a professional staff member on Senator Edward Kennedy's Senate Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research.

He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, a National Associate of the National Academy of Sciences, and serves on several editorial boards, including the American Journal of Medicine and Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law. He is also a National Correspondent for The New England Journal of Medicine. He serves on advisory committees to the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Social Insurance, the Open Society Institute and other foundations.

Dr. Blumenthal was the founding chairman of AcademyHealth (formerly the Academy for Health Services Research and Health Policy), the national organization of health services researchers. He is also Director of the Harvard University Interfaculty Program for Health Systems Improvement. He is recipient of the Distinguished Investigator Award from AcademyHealth, and a Doctor of Humane Letters from Rush University. He is a Senior Advisor to the Obama campaign in health policy. He has served as a trustee of the University of Chicago Health System and currently serves as a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania Health System (Penn Medicine).

His research interests include the dissemination of health information technology, quality management in health care, the determinants of physician behavior, access to health services, and the extent and consequences of academic-industrial relationships in the health sciences.

Recent Responses

December 1, 2008 08:35 AM

RE: Paying For Health Reform

In the Nov. 17 New England Journal of Medicine, Blumenthal co-wrote an article about the role of President Lyndon Johnson in the creation of Medicare and Medicaid. Blumenthal wrote that Johnson knew the programs would be expensive, but that he chose to ignore the cost because of the importance of health care. Here is an excerpt from the article: The expansion of health care to large populations is expensive, and presidents may need to quiet their inner economists. Johnson decided, in effect, to expand coverage now and worry about how to afford it later. Accurate cost estimates might very well…  Read more
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