Health Insurance Dynamics

James Capretta is a senior fellow and holder of the Milton Friedman Chair at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he studies health care, entitlement programs, and fiscal trends in advanced economies. Capretta concurrently serves as a senior adviser to the Bipartisan Policy Center, and he has also served as a member of the advisory board of the National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation since 2011.

He spent more than 16 years in public service before joining AEI. As an associate director at the White House’s Office of Management and Budget from 2001 to 2004, he was responsible for all health care, Social Security, welfare, and labor and education issues. Previously, he served as a senior analyst at the U.S. Senate Budget Committee and the U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means. Before joining AEI full-time, Capretta was affiliated with other national think tanks.

Capretta is the author of US Health Policy and Market Reforms: An Introduction (AEI Press, 2022), and several book chapters, including “Fiscal rules for Social Security and Medicare: Would accrual accounting help?” in Public Debt Sustainability: International Perspectives (Lexington Books / Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group Inc., 2022), and with Joseph Antos, “The road not taken” in The Trillion Dollar Revolution: How the Affordable Care Act Transformed Politics, Law, and Health Care in America (Public Affairs, 2020).

A contributor to RealClearPolicy, Capretta has testified before Congress and published many essays and reports since leaving government service in 2004. He earned an MA in public policy studies from Duke University and a BA in government from the University of Notre Dame.

Lydia DePillis joined the New York Times in 2022 as a reporter covering the American economy. In her role, DePillis closely studies various data and research indicating the health of the U.S. economy, the status of American workers and businesses, and how public policy affects them. She has a particular interest in the ways climate change is warping everything from agriculture to the financial system, the shifting bargaining power of American labor, and why cities and regions grow or shrink. While much of her work is explanatory in nature, she also considers that part of her job is to expose wrongdoing and hold those with power to account.

Following her graduation from Columbia College in 2009, DePillis worked for several news outlets prior to joining the New York Times. She reported on topics at various newspapers that helped her to understand the many corners of the economy: real estate and land use at the Washington City Paper, technology at the New Republic, labor and finance at the Washington Post, and the energy industry at the Houston Chronicle. DePillis first handled the national economy while writing for CNN, and she then learned investigative techniques while covering federal agencies at the nonprofit investigative newsroom ProPublica.

Anthony LoSasso is a professor, Driehaus Fellow, and chair of the Department of Economics at the Driehaus College of Business at DePaul University. He is an economist whose research spans several dimensions of health and labor economics, health policy, and health services and outcomes research.

LoSasso is keenly interested in how government policies affect private sector decisions. After receiving an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Five-Year Independent Scientist Award entitled “Workplace Health Benefits and Employee Health,” LoSasso’s research explored the impact of the State Children"'s Health Insurance Program on insurance among children and the extent to which public coverage may have “crowded out" private coverage of children, how community rating provisions in state health insurance markets affect health insurance coverage, and how the availability of safety net health care services affects the willingness of firms to offer health insurance and the willingness of employees to take up health insurance when it is offered.

An area of particular interest for LoSasso is the effects of health insurance benefit design on health care utilization and health outcomes. This work includes an AHRQ-funded research grant to study so-called narrow network insurance plans; a National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)-funded study to examine the impact of an expansion of mental health benefits on cost and quality of care at a large manufacturing firm; and ongoing work examining the effects of high deductible health insurance on health care use.

LoSasso was appointed by the governor to the State of Illinois’s new Medicaid Managed Care Oversight Commission. The commission evaluates the effectiveness of Illinois’s managed care program. LoSasso will serve as an academic expert on the Medicaid managed care program.

Additionally, LoSasso has served as co-investigator on an NIH-funded study examining the effects of corporate wellness programs on the use of preventive services and health outcomes. With training in labor and health economics and extensive experience studying the effects of insurance in both the private and public sectors, LoSasso is a nationally recognized leader in the field.

Angela Harper Mahome is a child and adolescent psychiatrist who has spent most of her professional career working in Chicago and its southwest suburbs. Her interest in insurance coverage began during her high school years when she worked at her father’s orthopedic practice in Atlanta, Georgia. She completed her undergraduate degree at Spelman College before attending medical school at the Medical College of Georgia. Mahome then completed her residency in general psychiatry and fellowship in child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Chicago Hospitals. She currently works as an inpatient psychiatrist at Montrose Behavioral Health Hospital for Children, and also serves as a consultant for Danville School District 118. With more than 20 years of experience, Mahome has worked in various clinical settings, including an inner-city mental health center and a safety-net hospital, that relied on reimbursements from Medicare and Medicaid. Mahome has also worked in private settings where patients had premium insurance plans or the means to pay for their care out-of-pocket.

Angela Harper Mahome is a child and adolescent psychiatrist who has spent most of her professional career working in Chicago and its southwest suburbs. Her interest in insurance coverage began during her high school years when she worked at her father’s orthopedic practice in Atlanta, Georgia. She completed her undergraduate degree at Spelman College before attending medical school at the Medical College of Georgia. Mahome then completed her residency in general psychiatry and fellowship in child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Chicago Hospitals. She currently works as an inpatient psychiatrist at Montrose Behavioral Health Hospital for Children, and also serves as a consultant for Danville School District 118. With more than 20 years of experience, Mahome has worked in various clinical settings, including an inner-city mental health center and a safety-net hospital, that relied on reimbursements from Medicare and Medicaid. Mahome has also worked in private settings where patients had premium insurance plans or the means to pay for their care out-of-pocket.

Robin Rudowitz is vice president at KFF and director of the Program on Medicaid and the Uninsured, where she oversees all work on Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and low-income populations including coverage, eligibility, financing, delivery systems, access and long-term services and supports. Prior to joining KFF in 2004, Rudowitz was a senior manager at the Lewin Group, a health policy and management consulting firm. Rudowitz has worked on budget and health policy issues in various government agencies, including the Office of Legislation at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Office of the Chief Financial Officer for the District of Columbia, Congressional Budget Office, and Ways and Means Committee for the New York State Assembly.

Rudowitz holds a bachelor’s degree in policy analysis and a master’s degree in public administration from Cornell University.