EXPERTS ADVISORY

John Ayanian, director of the Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation, the Alice Hamilton Professor of Internal Medicine and professor of public health and public policy, is an expert on how access to health insurance affects individuals’ access to health care, the quality of care they receive and their health outcomes.

He leads IHPI’s federally approved objective evaluation of the Healthy Michigan Plan, the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. The evaluation recently found that Michigan’s expansion of Medicaid health insurance coverage has boosted the state’s economy and budget, and will continue to do even as the state assumes more of the cost of caring for the 638,000 Michiganders who have signed up for the program.

Contact: Via Kara Gavin, 734-764-2220, [email protected]

Nicholas Bagley, professor at the Law School, is an authority on health care law, with a focus on Medicare and the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. He is also a frequent contributor to “The Incidental Economist,” a prominent health policy blog. On May 4, he posted a blog post titled “The Michigan Morsel” about an amendment proposed by Michigan Congressman Fred Upton.

Contact: [email protected]

Sue Anne Bell is a clinical associate professor in the U-M School of Nursing. Her research focuses on health outcomes in relationship to emergencies and acute care, with an eye towards impacting policy change, particularly in terms of health disparities.

Contact: [email protected] or on Twitter: @sueannebell

Thomas Buchmueller, the Waldo O. Hildebrand Professor of Risk Management and Insurance at the Ross School of Business, is a health economist whose research focuses on the economics of health insurance and related public policy issues. His recent work has examined the relationship between employer-sponsored insurance and labor market outcomes, interactions between the public sector and private insurance markets, and consumer demand for health insurance.

Contact: 734-764-5933, [email protected]

Vanessa Dalton is an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Medical School who examines the impact of health care reform on reproductive health services utilization. She is using data from private insurance companies to analyze patterns of contraceptive use, preventive screening and women’s health visits before and after the Affordable Care Act mandate for women’s health services took effect.

Contact: Via Beata Mostafavi, 734-764-2220, [email protected]

Chad Ellimoottil is an assistant professor of urology at the Medical School who studies the impact of several programs rolled out by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, which was created under the Affordable Care Act. His research has evaluated the bundled payment programs that pay hospitals in a new way based on quality and cost, as well as the impact of the Hospital Readmission Reduction Program.

Contact: Via Kara Gavin, 734-764-2220, [email protected]

Mark Fendrick is a professor of internal medicine at the Medical School and professor of health management and policy at the School of Public Health. He also heads the Center for Value-Based Insurance Design, a bipartisan health reform initiative that has been incorporated into private and public health insurance plans.

Contact: Via Kara Gavin, 734-764-2220, [email protected]

Scott Greer, associate professor of health management and policy at the School of Public Health, researches the politics of health policies, with a special emphasis on the politics and policies of the European Union and the impact of federalism on health care. His U.S.-focused research has addressed policy implications of Ebola and Zika, and a scorecard that showed how public health would be impacted under the new administration.

Contact: 734-615-3711, [email protected]

Laura Gultekin, the Suzanne Bellinger Feetham Professor of Nursing at the School of Nursing, works with low-resource families through research and clinical practice. She can discuss the huge decline in the numbers of people who have needed free care at clinics before and after the Affordable Care Act.

Contact: 734-647-0193, [email protected]

Richard Hirth, professor and chair of health management and policy at the School of Public Health and professor of internal medicine at the Medical School, can discuss the Affordable Care Act and efforts to repeal and replace it. His research lies in the areas of economics of health insurance, health care costs and payment system design.

He will lead a teach-out May 12 called “The Future of Obamacare: Repeal, Repair, or Replace?” The free weekend-long learning opportunity on the edX platform will help participants understand the facets of the Affordable Care Act and how different options for its future will impact the U.S. health care landscape.

Contact: 734-936-1306, [email protected]

Jeffrey Kullgren is an assistant professor of internal medicine at the Medical School. He studies how people make decisions about the health care they use and how those decisions are affected by the out-of-pocket costs they face through high-deductible health plans, and the “transparency” tools made available by public and private insurers and nonprofits. He is working with a major private insurer to develop a price-transparency tool that can be used during a patient visit.

Contact: Via Kara Gavin, 734-764-2220, [email protected]

Helen Levy is a research professor at the Institute for Social Research, School of Public Health and Ford School of Public Policy. She is a health economist who studies the causes and consequences of uninsurance, and evaluates the impact of public health insurance programs. She also is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and served as a senior economist to the President’s Council of Economic Advisers.

Contact: [email protected]

Sara Pasquali, the Janette Ferrantino Professor of Pediatrics at the Medical School, specializes in the care of children born with heart conditions, as well as a leading researcher on quality of care for such children nationwide. In the wake of TV host Jimmy Kimmel’s monologue on his newborn son’s life-threatening heart defect, she can speak about the many aspects of health policy that affect the lives of such children, and about the need for research to ensure that they receive high-quality lifelong care.

Contact: Via Kara Gavin, 734-764-2220, [email protected]

Renuka Tipirneni, clinical lecturer in internal medicine at the Medical School, studies health reform, primary care practice redesign and Medicaid policy, including the impact of Medicaid expansion on access to primary care in Michigan. She is also interested in the potential impact of health care reform on health disparities and generally in issues related to health care access, immigrant health and vulnerable populations.

Contact: Via Kara Gavin, 734-764-2220, [email protected]

Marianne Udow-Phillips is the executive director of the Center for Healthcare Research & Transformation, a nonpartisan health policy center based at U-M, and a lecturer at the School of Public Health. Previously, Udow-Phillips spent more than 20 years in leadership positions at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and served as director of the Michigan Department of Human Services. Her expertise includes access to health care, as well as health insurance, and payment and financing.

Contact: Via Heather Guenther, 734-998-8514, [email protected]