JOSEPH P. NEWHOUSE
homepage: http://ksgfaculty.harvard.edu/joseph_newhouse

Dr. Newhouse is the John D. MacArthur Professor of Health Policy and Management, Director of the Division of Health Policy Research and Education, and chair of the Committee on Higher Degrees in Health Policy at Harvard University, which administers the Ph.D. degree in Health Policy. He is a member of the faculties of the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard Medical School, the Harvard School of Public Health, and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, as well as a faculty research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He co-directs the Robert Wood Johnson Scholars in Health Policy program at Harvard. Dr. Newhouse’s recent research topics include risk adjustment for reimbursement of health plans and health providers and the impact of managed care on use of services, cost, and quality of care, as well as improved medical care price indices and the economics of the Medicaid tobacco settlement. One current project that involves many of his research areas concerns structuring markets to promote efficient competition among health plans. As part of this project, he is studying why health plans tend not to enter rural areas; although some federal policies assume that this failure is attributable to low payment, market structure features are more likely responsible. He is also studying selection behavior in large groups and why private groups that offer multiple health plans tend not to use formal risk adjustment methods. Finally, he is studying whether varying reimbursement rates for cancer chemotherapy affect the likelihood of such therapy being administered or whether they affect the mix of agents employed. Dr. Newhouse received B.A. and Ph.D. degrees in economics from Harvard University. He was the founding editor of the Journal of Health Economics, which he continues to co-edit. He is currently a member of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission and was its vice-chair from 1997-2001. He is a past chair of the Prospective Payment Assessment Commission, a past commissioner of the Physician Payment Review Commission, a past president of the Association for Health Services Research, a past president of the International Health Economics Association, a past Regent of the National Library of Medicine, and a member of the Institute of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has received numerous awards, including: the Distinguished Investigator Award of the Association for Health Services Research (now AcademyHealth); the Hans Sigrist Prize for distinguished scientific achievement, the Baxter American Foundation Award for a contribution to public health, the David Kershaw Award of the Association of Public Policy and Management for a contribution made under the age of 40, the Administrator’s Citation from the Administrator of the Health Care Financing Administration, and the Zvi Griliches Award and the Kenneth J. Arrow Award. He is a member of the board of Aetna and of Abt Associates.