Malcolm MacEachern Symposium 2018

IBM Professor of Regulation and Competitive Practices, Northwestern University, Kellogg School of Management

Professor David Besanko is IBM Professor of Regulation & Competitive Practices at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Besanko is a Kellogg graduate, having received his Ph.D. in Managerial Economics and Decision Sciences in 1981. He received his AB in Political Science from Ohio University in 1977. Before joining the Kellogg faculty in 1991, Professor Besanko was a member of the faculty of the School of Business at Indiana University from 1982 to 1991. In addition, in 1985, he held a post-doctorate position on the Economics Staff at Bell Communications Research.

Walter J. McNerney Professor of Health Industry Management

David Dranove is the Walter McNerney Distinguished Professor of Health Industry Management at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, where he is also Professor of Strategy.  He was previously Director of the Health Enterprise Management program. He has a PhD in Economics from Stanford University.

The Trione Director of SIEPR; The Wayne and Jodi
Cooperman Professor of Economics, Stanford University

Mark Duggan is The Trione Director of SIEPR and The Wayne and Jodi Cooperman Professor of Economics at Stanford University. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering at M.I.T. in 1992 and 1994, respectively, and his Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University in 1999. He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and serves on the Editorial Board of the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy.

Professor Duggan's research focuses on the health care sector and also on the effects of government expenditure programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

He was the 2010 recipient of the ASHEcon Medal, which is awarded every two years by the American Society of Health Economists to the economist aged 40 and under in the U.S. who has made the most significant contributions to the field of health economics. Professor Duggan served from 2009-10 as the Senior Economist for Health Care Policy at the White House Council of Economic Advisers and has testified about his research before the House Ways and Means and Senate Budget Committees.

Associate Professor of Strategy, Director of Health Enterprise Management, Northwestern University, Kellogg School of Management

Professor Garthwaite is an Associate Professor of Strategy and the Director of Kellogg's Health Enterprise Management Program (HEMA). He is an applied microeconomist whose research examines the effects of government policies and social phenomena with a focus on health and biopharmaceutical sectors. His recent work has focused on the private sector effects of the Affordable Care Act, including the labor supply effects of large insurance expansions, the changes in uncompensated hospital care resulting from public insurance expansions, and the responses of non-profit hospitals to financial shocks. In prior work, he has examined the impact of government cash assistance programs on health and the effect of changes in expected mortality from the emergence of crack-cocaine markets on educational attainment.

Office of the Chief Executive, UnitedHealth Group
Chief Executive Officer, UnitedHealthcare

Steve Nelson is chief executive officer of UnitedHealthcare, a $160 billion division of UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH) – No. 6 on the Fortune 500 list. UnitedHealthcare serves one in eight Americans, making it the single largest business dedicated to health and well-being in the United States. In September 2017, he was named to the Office of the Chief Executive for UnitedHealth Group.

Previously Steve served as chief executive officer of UnitedHealthcare’s Medicare & Retirement business, a $65 billion division of UnitedHealthcare and the nation’s largest organization dedicated to seniors and Medicare beneficiaries. Other past roles included leading UnitedHealthcare’s Community & State business, an organization that delivers Medicaid solutions to 25 state governments and more than 5 million individuals, and leadership of the West Region of UnitedHealthcare’s Employer & Individual business. Before coming to UnitedHealthcare, Steve was president of the Eastern Region and Senior Products Division at HealthNet (NYSE: HNT) and served for 10 years in executive roles at the Henry Ford Health System.

Steve and his family are active in their community and the outdoors. Steve, himself, is an avid triathlete and five-time IRONMAN finisher, including the IRONMAN World Championship. Steve earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Portland State University and holds master’s degrees in Business Administration and Health Services Administration from the University of Michigan, where he serves as an adjunct professor in the School of Public Health.

Vice President of Policy and Finance, South Carolina Hospital Association
Former Director of the South Carolina Department of Health and Human Services and President of the National Association of Medicaid Directors

Christian L. Soura is Vice President of Policy and Finance at the South Carolina Hospital Association.

From 2014 to 2017, he was Director of the South Carolina Department of Health and Human Services; in his final year, he was also President of the National Association of Medicaid Directors.

Earlier, Soura doubled as the Deputy Chief of Staff for Budget and Policy for Gov. Nikki R. Haley and as a member of the South Carolina Commission on National and Community Service. He was the lead author of the state's annual Executive Budget and developed many of the administration's key proposals, including the K-12 Education Reform Initiative.

Beginning in 2001, he held a range of appointments with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, including as Secretary of Administration and Chairman of the Pennsylvania Employees Benefit Trust Fund.

Soura serves on the Board of Directors of the Nurse-Family Partnership and previously held leadership positions in the National Association of State Chief Administrators and the American Society for Public Administration. He is a 2016 Liberty Fellow and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.

He holds master's degrees from the University of Illinois and the Pennsylvania State University (Phi Beta Kappa), where he was a director of the Renaissance Fund and also completed a graduate certificate in public budgeting and financial management.

He lives in Irmo, South Carolina with his wife Emily and two children.

Associate Professor of Strategy, Northwestern University, Kellogg School of Management

Amanda Starc, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Strategy at the Kellogg School of Management and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). She received her BA in Economics from Case Western Reserve University, and her PhD in Business Economics from Harvard University. Dr. Starc's research interests include industrial organization and health economics.

Her research examines the Medicare Advantage, Medicare Part D, and Medicare Supplement ("Medigap") markets, as well as consumer behavior in insurance exchanges. Recent work measures the effectiveness of direct-to-consumer advertising of pharmaceuticals. Her work links models of consumer choice and supply side incentives, and uses a range of econometric techniques to analyze data.