Power, Politics, and Universal Health Care

Stuart Altman, the Sol C. Chaikin Professor of National Health Policy at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University, is an internationally recognized expert in health policy. He served as a deputy assistant secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare in the Nixon administration and was one of the architects of Nixon’s plan for universal health care. He was chair of the Prospective Payment Assessment Commission (ProPAC) for twelve years under presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Bill Clinton. ProPAC was responsible for overseeing the way Medicare paid hospitals and other health institutions. He also served on President Clinton’s transition team and was appointed to the president’s Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare. Recently, he was a member of the health policy team for Barack Obama during his presidential campaign.David Shactman is a freelance writer who was a senior fellow at the Schneider Institute for Health Policy at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University, and worked with Stuart Altman for eleven years. During that time, he was coeditor of two books: Policies for an Aging Society (with Stuart Altman) and Regulating Managed Care (with Stuart Altman and Uwe E. Reinhardt). He has also written numerous articles published in peer-reviewed journals and trade magazines, including Health Affairs and the New England Journal of Medicine.