Altman: Policy architect

With more than three decades of experience helping shape federal and state healthcare policy on some of the most critical issues, including Medicare reform and universal health coverage, Stuart Altman has earned guru status.

Currently, Altman, 68, is a professor of health policy and economics at Brandeis University's Heller School for Social Policy and Management as well as the school's dean, a position he also held from 1977 to 1993 (he also served as the university's interim president from 1990 to 1991). He's also chairman of the Council on Health Care Economics and Policy, a nonpartisan think tank sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and a longtime member of the Institute of Medicine. When Altman talks, people listen, said Joseph Morone, chairman of the Tufts University board of trustees, in an interview with Modern Healthcare last year. That might be why Altman, who has a master's degree and a doctorate in economics from the University of California at Los Angeles, has been asked to proffer his expertise on about a dozen key advisory boards on healthcare and other issues. He was appointed by President Clinton to the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare and was the first chairman of the Prospective Payment Assessment Commission, the panel formed in 1984 to advise Congress on the Medicare payment system and a predecessor to today's Medicare Payment Advisory Commission. He was also a senior member of the Clinton-Gore health policy transition team after their election in 1992.