USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics

Dr. James J. Heckman is the USC Presidential Scholar-in-Residence at the Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics. Dr. Heckman is also the Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, where he has served since 1973. In 2000, Professor Heckman won the Nobel Prize in Economics for contributions to the field of policy analysis (the study of selection bias and for the evaluation of social programs). He directs the Center for the Economics of Human Development, the Economics Research Center, the Center for Social Program Evaluation at the Harris School for Public Policy, and the Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Global Working Group at the University of Chicago. Professor Heckman also is a Senior Research Fellow at the American Bar Foundation. He has a long history of interdisciplinary research pursuing a new synthesis of human development over the life course by broadening the boundaries of economic analysis to incorporate perspectives and methodologies from psychology, primatology, child development, and statisticians to create new tools to measure capabilities and outcomes. His recent work investigates the role of early life environments on success later in life.

USC Schaeffer Center Quintiles Health Policy Seminar Series and the Bedrosian Price Research Collaborative Series. The Bedrosian Center on Governance and the Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics invite you to hear Mitchell Katz, M.D., the Director of the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, speak as part of the Quintiles Seminar Series that features prominent academics, researchers, policy makers, and industry leaders to discuss prevalent and current themes in health, policy, and economics. Dr. Katz will speak about how to make a difference through policy work that deals with issues from needle exchange, changes in public health law around HIV and STDs, as well as increasing access under the Affordable Care Act.

The closing plenary of the American Society for Health Economists conference featured an awards ceremony and the national Leonard D. Schaeffer Chairs. The awards presented were: Victor R. Fuchs Award for Lifetime Achievement to Joseph Newhouse ASHEcon Medal to Amy Finkelstein Student Paper Award to Alice Chen The national Leonard D. Schaeffer chairs panel on payment reform followed. The four current chairs spoke on various aspects of payment reform, including accountable care organizations, bundled payments, benefit design and consumer-facing incentives: Dana Goldman, Leonard D. Schaeffer Director’s Chair, USC – moderator Alice Rivlin, Leonard D. Schaeffer Chair in Health Policy Studies and Director of the Engelberg Center, Brookings Institution Michael Chernew, Leonard D. Schaeffer Professor of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School James Robinson, Leonard D. Schaeffer Professor of Health Economics and Director of the Berkeley Center for Health Technology (BCHT), UC- Berkeley

Lunchtime plenary at the 2014 American Society of Health Economists conference hosted by the Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics, video 1 of 4. This session includes opening remarks by Debbie Freund, President of Claremont Graduate University. Craig Fox from UCLA is the first presenter, speaking on why studying clinician behavior is important and well suited to decision science.

Lunchtime plenary at the 2014 American Society of Health Economists conference hosted by the Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics, video 3 of 4. Kevin Volpp from the University of Pennsylvania discusses some general observations and insights from his work on incenting patients.

Lunchtime plenary at the 2014 American Society of Health Economists conference hosted by the Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics, video 4 of 4. The three plenary presenters: Craig Fox, Jason Doctor and Kevin Volpp engage in a Q and A with the audience.

Lunchtime plenary at the 2014 American Society of Health Economists conference hosted by the Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics, video 2 of 4. Jason Doctor, Director of Health Informatics at the Schaeffer Center, presents on nonmonetary social motivators that can alter physician behavior and reach better health outcomes.

ASHEcon Executive Director, Tony Lo Sasso, presents ASHEcon President Frank Sloan with the 2014 Presidential Award for his service to the organization. Frank Sloan delivers the biennial Presidential address and unveils the American Journal of Health Economics.

This is the Opening Plenary of the 2014 American Society of Health Economists conference (ASHEcon), hosted by the Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics at USC. The Opening Plenary included opening remarks by Tony Lo Sasso, Executive Director of ASHEcon, and Frank Sloan, President of ASHEcon. Neeraj Sood, Director of Research, Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics, presented results from a survey of the membership, which consists of American health economists. Questions included how to reduce rising Medicare spending, predicted annual growth for health care costs and whether increasing health insurance coverage will improve longevity of the newly insured. The Plenary featured a debate on the Affordable Care Act moderated by Sarah Kliff, Senior Editor at Vox.com, with renowned economists Peter Orszag and Casey Mulligan engaging in a lively discussion on provisions of the Affordable Care Act and the future of its implementation.

The USC Schaeffer Center welcomes David Leonhardt to USC to share his insights on U.S. policy, as well as the future of journalism. His new venture, The Upshot, will cover politics and policy, using conversational language, data and graphics in a way that aims to "appeal to the many people out there who wish they understood the world a bit better." Leonhardt is a Pulitzer Prize winner and was previously the New York Times' Washington bureau chief. As an economics columnist, he focused on the housing bubble, the economic downturn, the budget deficit, health reform and education. The mission of the Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics at the University of Southern California is to measurably improve value in health through evidence based policy solutions, research excellence, transformative education, and private and public sector engagement. The Center is a unique collaboration between the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy and the USC School of Pharmacy.

This was an informational hearing for the California Assembly Select committee on biotechnology. Professor Darius Lakdawalla is the Quintiles Chair of Pharmaceutical Development and Regulatory Innovation at the School of Pharmacy, with a joint appointment at the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy. He is an economist at the Schaeffer Center and was asked to present on California’s biotechnology marketplace and how higher education and innovation can drive the state’s success.

Dana Goldman is a Professor and the Leonard D. Schaeffer Director’s Chair at the University of Southern California. Until Fall 2009, he held RAND’s Distinguished Chair in Health Economics and directed RAND’s program in Economics, Finance, and Organization. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Health Services and Radiology at UCLA. Dr. Goldman is a nationally-recognized health economist influential in both academic and policy circles. He is the author of over 100 articles and book chapters, including articles in some of the most prestigious medical, economic, health policy, and statistics journals. He is a health policy advisor to the Congressional Budget Office, and is a frequent speaker on health care issues. He serves on several editorial boards including Health Affairs and the American Journal of Managed Care. He is also a founding editor of the Forum for Health Economics and Policy, an online journal devoted to health economics and health policy. Dr. Goldman’s work has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Business Week, U.S. News and World Report, The Economist, NBC Nightly News, CNN, National Public Radio, and other media. Dr. Goldman was the 2009 recipient of the Eugene Garfield Economic Impact Prize, recognizing outstanding research demonstrating how medical research impacts the economy. He was awarded the National Institute for Health Care Management Research Foundation award for excellence in health policy, and the Alice S. Hersh New Investigator Award recognizing the contributions of a young scholar to the field of health services research. He also has served on several panels for the National Academy of Sciences and Institute of Medicine, including a current panel on the fiscal future of the United States. Dr. Goldman’s research sponsors include the National Institutes of Health, National Institute on Aging, National Cancer Institute, National Science Foundation, Amgen, Merck, Genentech, Pfizer, UnitedHealth, Pacificare, California Healthcare Foundation, Smith Richardson Foundation, Department of Defense, Department of Labor, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Dr. Goldman is also a research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research, the nation’s leading economic research organization. He is the director of the RAND/UCLA Health Services Research Postdoctoral Training Program. He is also a founder and managing director of Precision Health Economics, a consulting firm to the health care industry. Dr. Goldman received his B.A. summa cum laude from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford University.

On February 6, 2013, the USC Price School in Sacramento hosted a panel discussion on the challenges and opportunities of the California Health Benefit Exchange. The speakers included: Peter Lee, Executive Director of the CA Health Benefit Exchange; Dana Goldman, founding director of the Leonard Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics at USC; Bob Kocher, Partner at Venrock and Jay Hansen, Chief Strategy Officer for the California Medical Association.

A tribute and short history of the extraordinary achievements of Leonard D. Schaeffer, founder of the USC Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics.

Featuring Darius Lakdawalla, Professor in the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy and Quintiles Chair in Pharmaceutical Development and Regulatory Innovation as well as Director of Research at Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics

Industry experts from a variety of professional backgrounds discuss the recent Affordable Care Act ruling, specifically noting the way in which this landmark case will affect the management of health organizations in CA.

Judge Widney Distinguished Lecture Leaders, Managers, or Analysts: Who Will Shape the Future? Leonard D. Schaeffer is the founding Chairman & CEO of WellPoint, the nation's largest health insurance company. WellPoint has over 33 million medical members and annualized revenues of $58 billion. He is currently the Judge Robert Maclay Widney Chair and Professor at the University of Southern California and a Senior Advisor to TPG Capital, a private equity firm. Sponsored by the USC Price School of Public Policy.

The Long-term Impact of Medicare Payment Reductions on Patient Outcomes (http://www.nber.org/papers/w16859) This study examines the long term impact of Medicare payment reductions on patient outcomes using a natural experiment - the Balance Budget Act of 1997.We use predicted Medicare revenue changes due to BBA, with simulated BBA payment cuts as an instrument, to categorize hospitals by degrees of payment cuts (small, moderate, or large), and follow Medicare patient outcomes in these hospitals over a 11 year panel: 1995-1997 pre-BBA, 1998-2000 initial years of BBA, and 2001-2005 post-BBA years. We find that Medicare AMI mortality trends stay similar across hospitals when comparing between pre-BBA and initial-BBA periods. However, the effect became measurable in 2001-2005: hospitals facing large payment cuts saw increased mortality rates relative to that of hospitals facing small cuts in the post-BBA period (2001-2005) after controlling for their pre-BBA trends. We find support that part of the worsening AMI patient outcomes in the large-cut hospitals is explained by reductions in staffing level and operating cost following the payment cuts, and that in-hospital mortality is not affected partly due to patients being discharged earlier.

The policy debates over the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare"), and current efforts to repeal it or hamper its implementation, are fueled by starkly different views of the ability of private markets to deliver health care effectively. This presentation reviews where health care in America stands relative to the rest of the world, and where it is going, with or without Obamacare. It reviews the experience with the market for prescription drug insurance established in 2006 under Medicare Part D, identifies the prerequisites for a healthy market for health insurance, and draws lessons from this for the insurance regulations and exchanges planned under Obamacare. Daniel L. McFadden, PhD. was recently appointed the Presidential Professor of Health Economics at USC by President C.L. Max Nikias. He is a professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. Professor McFadden is the 2000 Nobel Laureate in Economics for his work in econometric methods for studying behavioral patterns in individual decision-making. Following the completion of his PhD in 1962 at the University of Minnesota, Professor McFadden went to the University of Pittsburgh as a Mellon postdoctoral fellow. The following year, he joined UC Berkeley's economics department. In 1979, Professor McFadden moved to the economics faculty at MIT, and in 1991 he returned to UC Berkeley. Among his many awards and honors, Professor McFadden received the John Bates Clark Medal from the American Economics Association in 1975; he was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 1977 and to the National Academy of Science in 1981; in 1985 he delivered the Jahnsson Foundation Lectures in Helsinki, Finland; in 1986 he won the Frisch Medal from the Econometrics Society, and in 2000 he received the Nemmers Prize in Economics from Northwestern University.