The Most Influential People in Healthcare

The magazine Modern Healthcare came out with its list of the 100 most influential people in health care this week.  The list is dominated by politicians (understandable in this chaotic year of the ACA constitutionality battle and the presidential election).  Justice Roberts tops the list, President Obama is fourth, and HHS Secretary Sebelius is fifth (in my opinion she should be higher on the list).  Mitt Romney is 13th and his Vice Presidential running mate, Paul Ryan, is 24th.

Washington, DC, is the obvious epicenter of influence on policy, thus, the inordinate number from that area.  What’s more interesting is the significant number of hospital system and health insurance executives on the list from all over the country.  You see representatives from familiar organizations like Aetna, Kaiser Permanente, WellPoint, Humana, Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, and Geisinger Health System.

As important as these individuals and the organizations they lead and represent are, I’m glad to see leaders from organizations in my home state (Texas) who are not so well known are also on the list: Dan Wolterman of Memorial Hermann in Houston, Joel Allison of the Baylor Health Care System in Dallas, and Trevor Fetter of Tenet also in Dallas.  I’m familiar with these organizations and their fine work in the state of Texas.

Sometimes those of us in the “flyover country” go unrecognized and unrewarded.  I say, “A tip of the hat to my fellow Texans for the work you’re doing.”

By the way, there was only one health economist on the list, Jonathan Gruber of Harvard.  Seems that those of us toiling in academe have a long way to go before we’re perceived as having much influence on what we study.