Medicare Payment Policy

Commissioners’ biographies
scott Armstrong, M.B.A., F.A.C.H.e., is president
and chief executive officer (CEO) of Group Health
Cooperative, a consumer-governed health system serving
650,000 enrollees through coordinated care plans for
groups and individuals and for Medicare, Medicaid, and
SCHIP beneficiaries. He has worked at Group Health
since 1986, serving in positions ranging from assistant
hospital administrator to chief operating officer; he
became president and CEO in 2005. Before joining Group
Health, Mr. Armstrong was assistant vice president for
hospital operations at Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton,
OH. Mr. Armstrong is chair of the board of the Alliance of
Community Health Plans and board member of America’s
Health Insurance Plans and the Seattle Chamber of
Commerce. He is also immediate past-chair of the
Board of the Pacific Science Center and a fellow of the
American College of Healthcare Executives. He received
his bachelor’s degree from Hamilton College in New York
and a master’s degree in business with a concentration in
hospital administration from the University of Wisconsin–
Madison.
Katherine Baicker, ph.D., is professor of health
economics in the Department of Health Policy and
Management at the Harvard School of Public Health,
where her research focuses on health insurance finance
and the effect of reforms on the distribution and quality of
care. She serves on the editorial boards of Health Affairs,
the Journal of Health Economics, the Journal of Economic
Perspectives, and the Forum for Health Economics and
Policy, and is chair of the Board of Directors of Academy
Health. She is a research associate at the National Bureau
of Economic Research, is on the Congressional Budget
Office’s Panel of Health Advisers, and is an elected
member of the Institute of Medicine. From 2005 to 2007,
Professor Baicker served as a Senate-confirmed member
of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers. She
received her B.A. in economics from Yale University and
her Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University.
peter W. Butler, M.H.s.A., is a nationally recognized
health care executive with more than 30 years of
experience in academic medical centers and health care
systems. In addition to being president and chief operating
officer of Rush University Medical Center in Chicago,
IL, Mr. Butler is an associate professor and chairman of
the Department of Health Systems Management at Rush
University. Before joining Rush, he served as president
and chief executive officer at the Methodist Hospital
System in Houston and senior vice president and chief
administrative officer at the Henry Ford Health System
in Detroit. He has served as chairman of the board of
University HealthSystem Consortium. He also currently
serves as chairman of the board of the National Center for
Healthcare Leadership. Mr. Butler holds an undergraduate
degree in psychology from Amherst College and a
master’s degree in health services administration from the
University of Michigan.
Michael Chernew, ph.D., is a professor in the Department
of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School. Dr.
Chernew’s research activities focus on several areas,
most notably the causes and consequences of growth in
health care expenditures, geographic variation in medical
spending and use, and value-based insurance design. He
is a member of the Congressional Budget Office’s Panel
of Health Advisers and Commonwealth Foundation’s
Commission on a High Performance Health System. In
2000, 2004, and 2011, he served on technical advisory
panels for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services
that reviewed the assumptions used by the Medicare
actuaries to assess the financial status of the Medicare
trust funds. Dr. Chernew is a Faculty Research Fellow of
the National Bureau of Economic Research. He co-edits
the American Journal of Managed Care and is a senior
associate editor of Health Services Research. In 2010, Dr.
Chernew was elected to the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of
the National Academy of Sciences and serves on the IOM
Committee on Determination of Essential Health Benefits.
Dr. Chernew earned his undergraduate degree from the
University of Pennsylvania and a doctorate in economics
from Stanford University.
Alice Coombs, M.D., is a critical care specialist and an
anesthesiologist at Milton Hospital and South Shore
Hospital in Weymouth, MA. She is board certified
in internal medicine, anesthesiology and critical
care medicine. Dr. Coombs is past president of the
Massachusetts Medical Society (MMS) and a member
of MMS’s Committee on Ethnic Diversity. She chaired
the Committee on Workforce Diversity that is part of the
American Medical Association’s (AMA’s) Commission to
Eliminate Health Care Disparities and on the Governing
Council for the AMA Minority Affairs Consortium and
the AMA Initiative to Transform Medical Education. She
helped to establish the New England Medical Association,
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