Jack Rowe
UCSF Chancellor J. Michael Bishop, MD, will introduce Jack Rowe, MD, on Thursday, Jan. 11, 2007, as the second speaker in his Chancellor's Health Policy Lecture Series.
Rowe is an expert on health care economics and on successful aging. He recently retired as CEO of Aetna, Inc. and formerly was CEO of Mount Sinai NYU Health. He has titled his lecture "Market Solutions to the Health Care Crisis: Panaceas or Delusions?"
Rowe will speak at 513 Parnassus Ave., HSW 300, from noon to 1 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 11. The event is free and open to the public. In the event of audience overflow, a live video transmission of the lecture will play in HSW 302.
The Chancellor's Health Policy Lecture Series has been established to bring a major figure in health policy to the UCSF campus several times a year to raise awareness in the community of the important health policy issues of the day. In addition to his public lecture, Rowe will meet throughout the day with leaders of the schools and UCSF Medical Center, as well as friends of the University.
"I am constantly amazed that even physicians know very little about how we pay for health care services in the US," Rowe said. "This lectureship is an opportunity to describe, in some detail, the broad themes and forces that are currently sweeping health care in the US, the responses of two major players - government and commercial insurers - to this environment, and the likely future direction over the next several years."
For example, he said, government involvement in paying for health care is increasing, and soon will reach 50 percent of total costs. Commercial insurance has been shrinking by 1 percent per year over the past several years, and increasingly includes involvement with government-sponsored programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. These shifts are taking place within an environment where costs are increasing overall in response to demands for improvements and accountability in health care, yet costs for particular services trend lower year over year.
Rowe is a professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Since his retirement in late 2006 as CEO of Aetna, Inc., a leading health care and related benefits organization, he has remained executive chairman. Prior to joining Aetna, Rowe served as president and chief executive officer (1998-2000) of Mount Sinai NYU Health, one of the nation's largest academic health care organizations. Previously, he was president (1988-1998) of the Mount Sinai Hospital and Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City.
Before joining Mount Sinai, Rowe was a professor of medicine and the founding director of the Division on Aging at Harvard Medical School, and was chief of gerontology at Boston's Beth Israel Hospital. He has written more than 200 scientific publications, mostly on the physiology of the aging process, as well as a leading textbook of geriatric medicine.
He served as director of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Successful Aging, was a member of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission and is co-author, with Robert Kahn, PhD, of the book
Successful Aging (Pantheon, 1998). He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
UCSF's Chancellor's Health Policy Lecture Series is organized by a committee with representatives from each of the schools and from UCSF Medical Center. Committee Chair Steven Schroeder, MD, said that the lectures have broad appeal across the University because health policy is relevant to all. "The activities represented within the UCSF community - scholarship, education, clinical service, community outreach - exist within a complicated and turbulent health policy context," Schroeder said.
In April 2006, the audience overflowed Cole Hall for the inaugural lecture delivered by Jeffrey Drazen, MD, editor-in-chief of the
New England Journal of Medicine.
The third Chancellor's Health Policy Lecture is scheduled for April 5, 2007, with Uwe Reinhardt, PhD, of Princeton University, an expert on health care economics.
Contact the Chancellor's Health Policy Lecture series
by email.
Related Links
New England Journal Editor-In-Chief Drazen to Launch Chancellor's Health Policy Lecture Series on April 19
UCSF Today, April 4, 2006
Drazen Discusses Rise and Fall of Vioxx to Launch UCSF Lecture Series
UCSF Today, April 20, 2006
