Panel 1 – Think Again: What We Get Wrong About Health Care Payment and Why It Matters

Michael leads AAF’s health care research and analysis portfolio, including prescription drug pricing policy, Medicare and Medicaid payment rules, the Food and Drug Administration, and employer-sponsored insurance markets. His research and analysis have appeared in numerous publications.

Prior to joining AAF, Michael worked in both the public and private sectors on a broad array of health and human services policy. He has provided in-house and multi-client health policy leadership in the private sector, including on policy development, regulatory affairs, and strategic capital planning, for hospitals, payers, investment firms, and other stakeholders. Michael also worked at the Department of Health and Human Services on issues related to drug pricing and pharmaceutical manufacturing, public health, competition and transparency, and innovation policy. His purview has also included health IT interoperability and data exchange, HIPAA, and public health informatics.

Michael holds a master’s degree in biohazardous threat agents and emerging infectious diseases from Georgetown University, a master’s degree in economics from American University, and a bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Toledo.

Melinda J.B. Buntin, PhD joined the faculties of Health Policy and Management at the Bloomberg School of Public Health and of the Carey Business School in July 2023. As one of the top academic health policy leaders in the nation, Buntin will be part of the University’s Knowledge to Action and the Business of Health Bloomberg Distinguished Professor Cluster.

Professor Buntin joined Hopkins from Vanderbilt University, where she was the University Distinguished Professor in the Departments of Health Policy and of Medicine, Health, & Society and held the Mike Curb Chair for Health Policy as Chair of the Department of Health Policy, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.

Buntin trained in health policy with a concentration in economics at Harvard University where she received her PhD in 2000. She started her professional career at RAND Health and transitioned into several health policy leadership roles during her 12 years in Washington, D.C.. She was the director of the Office of Economic Analysis, Evaluation and Modeling at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology and was deputy director of Health, Retirement and Long-Term Analysis at the Congressional Budget Office.

In 2013, she became the founding chair of the Department of Health Policy at Vanderbilt University, a multidisciplinary department within a medical school. During her tenure she grew the faculty from 9 to 22, and started a Health Policy track in the MPH program, as well as a PhD program in Health Policy. Under her leadership and vision, it has become one of the leading departments of its kind.

Buntin is primarily based at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center at 555 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, where she aims to inform healthcare policy through a newly established health systems and policy modeling center. Buntin’s body of work has built bridges between healthcare policy and public health by advancing our understanding of healthcare delivery and costs, with an emphasis on improving the value created by the healthcare system. The center will address emerging issues in health policy with rigorous empirical work—predictive models and causal inference methods from econometric study designs—with the goal of providing insights to the healthcare sector, businesses, and policymakers on how to improve healthcare delivery and outcomes.

Jonathan (Jon) Blum is the co-founder and co-Managing Partner of Health Transformation Strategies, a health policy consulting and advisory firm. He is also a Non-Resident Senior Scholar at the USC Schaeffer Institute. More recently, Jon served as the Principal Deputy Administrator and Chief Operating Officer for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). In this dual role, Jon led CMS’s program policy planning and implementation and day-to-day operations for the entire agency. Jon also served as CMS’s Deputy Administrator and Director of the Center of Medicare during the Obama Administration, leading the agency’s Medicare payment and delivery reform strategies and the overall management of the Medicare program.

Susan Dentzer is President and Chief Executive Officer of America’s Physician Groups, the nonprofit organization representing more than 360 physician groups focused on patient-centered, coordinated, and integrated health care that is accountable for both costs and quality. Dentzer is a highly respected health policy thought leader, a frequent speaker, and an author of commentaries in the New England Journal of Medicine Catalyst, the American Journal of Public Health, and other publications. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and the Council on Foreign Relations, and a fellow of the National Academy of Social Insurance and the Hastings Center. Formerly editor-in-chief of the journal Health Affairs, and on-air health correspondent for the PBS NewsHour, Dentzer graduated from Dartmouth; holds a master’s degree in health care delivery science from the institution; is a trustee emerita of Dartmouth, and former chair of Dartmouth’s Board of Trustees.

Marc Samuels is founder and CEO of ADVI Health, a health care and life sciences advisory and consulting services firm headquartered in Washington, DC that helps clients accelerate growth, trailblaze innovation, and expand coverage of products and services. Marc also founded the firm’s life science accelerator, adviLAB, to invest in digital therapy, AI, MedTech, and cell and gene therapy clients in early stages of development. Marc has played a role in over 200 product and service projects over the last two decades from cell and gene, to rare and ultra-rare to oncology, and digital therapies. Marc has worked widely across the US health care system to improve regulatory and payer policy, promote appropriate clinical outcomes, and highlight the importance of the patient experience. Before founding ADVI, Marc was a partner in HillCo Partners, an Austin-based public affairs and advocacy company. He served both President George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush at the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, the Governor’s Policy Office, the Vice President’s Council on Competitiveness, and the White House Office of Policy Development, respectively. Marc began his career as an HIV researcher at the Midwest AIDS Behavioral Research Center in Ann Arbor. Marc speaks frequently on business strategy and policy matters. His comments and analyses have appeared in STAT News, The Pink Sheet, Fierce Healthcare, the Journal of Oncology Practice, Medical Economics, among other places. Marc earned his juris doctorate at the University of Texas, a master’s in public health from Yale School of Public Health, and a bachelor’s degree in neuropsychology from the University of Michigan. Marc is a visiting fellow at the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy, serves on the Board of Directors of NCCN Foundation, and is on the Advisory Board of the UCSF Rosenman Institute where he co-developed the Rosenman ADAPT and RISE programs, the later specifically created to advise and support founders from underrepresented groups to make the launch and scale of their health tech, digital or life science innovation as successful as possible.