One of the Nation’s Leading Health Care Experts to Speak at Holy Cross

WORCESTER, Mass. – One of the nation’s leading health care economists, Jonathan Gruber, will give a lecture titled, “Reforming Health Care in the U.S.: What Now?” at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 11 in the Rehm Library at the College of the Holy Cross. The event is free and open to the public.

Gruber, a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will provide a big picture look at the economics and policy behind universal health care coverage. With a non-partisan stance, he will diagnose problems with the national system, tie health care to economic competitiveness, and outline a path to universal care.

Gruber is widely regarded as one of the twenty most powerful people in American health care and was a key architect of Massachusetts’ health care reform and an inaugural member of the Health Connector Board, the main implementing body for that effort. He was a consultant to all three 2008 Democratic presidential candidates and was hailed by the Washington Post as “possibly the [Democratic] party's most influential health-care expert.”

He is director of the health care program at the National Bureau of Economic Research, where he is a research associate.  He is a co-editor of the Journal of Public Economics, and an associate editor of the Journal of Health Economics. Gruber is a recipient of the Presidential Faculty Fellow Award from the National Science Foundation.

The lecture is part of the yearlong economic series “After the Fall: Capitalism and a just way forward,” sponsored by the Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture, which explores the lessons learned from the credit crisis that began in 2007 and offers diverse perspectives on how to construct a new economy that is sustainable and just.

Audio recordings of previous talks in the lecture series are available at www.holycross.edu/crec/listen_learn. To learn more about this series and to sign up for email updates from the Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture, visit www.holycross.edu/crec.

About The Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture:

Established in 2001 and housed in Smith Hall, the Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture provides resources for faculty and course development, sponsors conferences and college-wide teaching events, hosts visiting fellows, and coordinates a number of campus lecture series. Rooted in the College's commitment to invite conversation about basic human questions, the Center welcomes persons of all faiths and seeks to foster dialogue that acknowledges and respects differences, providing a forum for intellectual exchange that is interreligious, interdisciplinary, intercultural, and international in scope.  The Center also brings members of the Holy Cross community into conversation with the Greater Worcester community, the academic community, and the wider world to examine the role of faith and inquiry in higher education and in the larger culture.