North Carolina Harper Lecture: The Effect of Medicaid on Spending, Health, and Well-Being

Featuring Katherine Baicker

With the future of Medicaid and public health insurance subsidies in flux, gauging the effects of public insurance on health care spending, financial security, and physical and mental health is crucial. Such effects are notoriously hard to assess, however, because there are many differences between uninsured and insured populations that may affect health. Katherine Baicker and colleagues used a rare opportunity in Oregon to conduct a randomized, controlled evaluation of the effects of Medicaid on a wide range of outcomes. Baicker will present recent findings from this and other studies to shed light on the likely effects of changes in health policy.

Event Details

6:00 p.m.  Registration and networking
6:30 p.m.  Presentation and discussion
7:30 p.m.  Reception

$20/person
$10/recent graduate (College alumni of the past 10 years and graduate alumni of the past five years)
Free for current academic year graduates and current students
Two complimentary registrations for members of the Chicago, Harper, Phoenix, and Medical and Biological Sciences Alumni Association philanthropic societies

Complimentary valet parking is available.

To register and find out more, please click here.

To learn more about the entire Harper Lectures series, please visit the UChicago Alumni Association's page.

Katherine Baicker is the new dean of the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. Baicker’s research focuses primarily on the factors that drive the distribution, generosity, and effectiveness of public and private health insurance, with a particular focus on health insurance finance and the effect of reforms on the distribution and quality of care. Her research has been published in journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, Science, Health Affairs, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and has been featured in outlets such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and National Public Radio. Baicker has also been the C. Boyden Gray Professor of Health Economics in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, as well as an appointee at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

Baicker is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, an affiliate of the Jameel Poverty Action Lab, a nonresident senior fellow of the Brookings Institution, and an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and the National Academy of Social Insurance. She serves as chair of the Massachusetts Group Insurance Commission, on the Congressional Budget Office’s Panel of Health Advisers, as a director of Eli Lilly, and on the editorial board of Health Affairs and the Journal of Health Economics. In addition, Baicker has served as chair of the board of directors of AcademyHealth and as a commissioner on the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission. From 2005 to 2007, she was a Senate-confirmed member of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, where she played a leading role in the development of health policy.

Baicker received her BA in economics from Yale University and her PhD in economics from Harvard University.

Questions? Contact harperlectures@uchicago.edu or 773.702.7788.