Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Giant In The Health Policy Landscape Uwe Reinhardt Dies At 80
Uwe Reinhardt, an economist whose keen, caustic and unconventional insights cast him as what colleagues called a national conscience in policy debates about health care, died on Monday in Princeton, N.J. He was 80. ... Professor Reinhardt helped shape health care deliberations for decades as a prolific contributor to numerous publications, an adviser to White House and congressional policymakers, a member of federal and professional commissions and a consultant and board member, paid and unpaid, for private industry. (Roberts, 11/15)
A tall man with movie-star looks and a melodious baritone voice, he used a combination of ironic humor, rigorous grasp of health economics, and lucid speaking and writing style to become perhaps the nation's foremost popularizer of healthcare policy issues. NPR and other news media frequently turned to him to explain complicated issues to the public. "He was part of that first wave of Ph.D-trained economists working in healthcare," said Gail Wilensky, a senior fellow at Project Hope who headed the Medicare program under President George H.W. Bush. "But nobody could approach him in terms of his wit and ability to communicate serious issues in a way that was so entertaining." (Meyer, 11/14)
Uwe Reinhardt, PhD, famed health economist and the James Madison professor of political economy and of economics at Princeton University in New Jersey, died Tuesday after an as yet undisclosed illness. ... Dr Reinhardt, born in Germany, taught health economics, comparative health systems, general microeconomics, and financial management at Princeton. He was also the codirector of the Griswold Center for Economic Policy Studies at Princeton. (Frellick, 11/14)
