Gail R. Wilensky

Gail R. Wilensky, PhD is an economist and a senior fellow at Project HOPE, an international health education foundation. Among her appointments and assignments, Dr. Wilensky is the president of the Defense Health Board (DHB), a Federal advisory board to the Secretary of Defense and also chairs the DHB Health Care Subcommittee. In addition, she serves as a trustee of the Combined Benefits Fund of the United Mine Workers of America and the National Opinion Research Center, is on the board of Regents of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences Center (USUHS) and the visiting committee of the Harvard Medical School. She recently served as a commissioner on the World Health Organization's Commission on the Social Determinants of health and co-chaired the Department of Defense Task Force on the Future of Military Health Care.

From 1990-92, she was administrator of the Health Care Financing Administration. She also served as deputy assistant to President George H.W. Bush for policy development, advising him on health and welfare issues from 1992-93. From 1997-2001, she chaired the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, and from 1995-97, she chaired the Physician Payment Review Commission. From 2001-03, she co-chaired the President's Task Force to Improve Health Care Delivery for Our Nation's Veterans. In 2007, she served as a commissioner on the President's Commission on Care for America's Returning Wounded Warriors.

Dr. Wilensky's work focuses on a number of system priorities, including creating methods to ensure a sustainable healthcare spending rate; establishing a comparative clinical effectiveness system and improving health care quality. She testifies frequently before Congressional committees and speaks before professional, business and consumer groups on a wide array of health care policy and care delivery topics. She earned her doctor of philosophy degree in economics at the University of Michigan.