In July 2007, Mark B. McClellan, MD, PhD, Senior Fellow,
became the Director of the Engelberg
Center for Healthcare
Reform at the Brookings Institution. The Center will study ways to provide
practical solutions for access, quality and financing challenges facing the U. S.
health care system. In addition, McClellan is the Leonard D. Schaeffer Chair in
Health Policy Studies.
McClellan has a highly distinguished record in public service and in academic research. He is the former administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (2004-2006) and the former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (2002-2004). He also served as a member of the President's Council of Economic Advisers and senior director for health care policy at the White House (2001-2002). In these positions, he developed and implemented major reforms in health policy. These include:
- The Medicare prescription drug benefit and other innovative coverage options, including the move from indemnity insurance to personalized, prevention-oriented care;
- Innovative approaches to coverage in Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program, including roadmaps that states have used to update and expand coverage and the "Money Follows the Person" initiatives in long-term care;
- The development of the FDA's Critical Path initiative, regulatory reforms to modernize pharmaceutical manufacturing, efficient risk-management methods to better address safety issues, and reforms to speed the approval of low-cost generic medicines and improve the availability of safe and effective treatments; and
- Public-private initiatives to develop better information on the quality and cost of care, and steps to help consumers and providers use this information to improve care, including performance-based provider payment reforms, and Health Savings Accounts and Health Reimbursement Arrangements.
In the Clinton administration, McClellan was deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury for economic policy from 1998-1999, supervising economic analysis and policy development on a range of domestic policy issues.
McClellan was also an associate professor of economics and associate professor of medicine (with tenure) at Stanford University, from which he was on leave during his government service. He directed Stanford's Program on Health Outcomes Research and was also associate editor of the Journal of Health Economics, and co-principal investigator of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a longitudinal study of the health and economic status of older Americans. His academic research has been concerned with the effectiveness of medical treatments in improving health, the economic and policy factors influencing medical treatment decisions and health outcomes, the impact of new technologies on public health and medical expenditures, and the relationship between health status and economic well being. He has twice received the Kenneth J. Arrow Award for Outstanding Research in Health Economics.
McClellan is a Member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
A graduate of the University
of Texas at Austin, McClellan earned his M.P.A. from
Harvard's Kennedy School of Government in 1991, his M.D.
from the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology in 1992, and
his Ph.D. in economics from MIT in 1993. He completed his residency training in
internal medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston. McClellan has been board-certified in
Internal Medicine and has been a practicing internist during his academic
career.