Joseph Newhouse

Joseph P. Newhouse,

Dr. Newhouse is the John D. MacArthur Professor of Health Policy and Management at Harvard University, Director of the Division of Health Policy Research and Education, chair of the Committee on Higher Degrees in Health Policy, and Director of the Interfaculty Initiative in Health Policy. He is a member of the faculties of the Harvard Kennedy School, the Harvard Medical School, the Harvard School of Public Health, and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, as well as a Faculty Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He received B.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Economics from Harvard University. Following his Bachelors degree, he was a Fulbright Scholar in Germany. Dr. Newhouse spent the first twenty years of his career at RAND, where he designed and directed the RAND Health Insurance Experiment. From 1981 to 1985 he was Head of the RAND Economics Department.

In 1981 he became the founding editor of the Journal of Health Economics, which he edited for 30 years. He is a current member of the editorial board of the New England Journal of Medicine and a past member of the editorial board of the Journal of Economic Perspectives. He was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 1977 and has served two terms on its governing Council. He has been elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a past President of the Association for Health Services Research (AHSR), now AcademyHealth, of the International Health Economics Association, and was the inaugural President of the American Society of Health Economists. He is a member of the Comptroller General’s Advisory Committee. He has served as the vice-chair of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, which reviews Medicare payment policy and makes recommendations to the Congress. This Commission resulted from the 1997 merger of two predecessor commissions, the Prospective Payment Assessment Commission and the Physician Payment Review Commission. Newhouse chaired the former and served as a Commissioner on the latter. From 2007-2012 he served on the CBO Board of Health Advisers, from 2006-2012 on the Committee on National Statistics of the National Research Council, and from 2004-2012 on the Science, Technology, and Economic Policy board of the National Research Council. He served as a regent of the National Library of Medicine from 1999 to 2003. He is a director of Aetna, Abt Associates, and the National Committee for Quality Assurance.

In 2014 he won the Victor Fuchs Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Health Economists. He was the first recipient of the David N. Kershaw Award and Prize of the Association for Public Policy and Management in 1983, which honors persons under 40 who have made a distinguished contribution to the field of public policy analysis and management. In 1988 he received the Baxter Health Services Research Prize for an unusually significant contribution to the improved medical care of the public through innovative health services research, as well as the Administrator’s Citation from the Health Care Financing Administration. He and his co-authors received Article of the Year Awards in 1989 from AHSR, in 2006 from both AcademyHealth and ISPOR, and in 2014 from the National Institute for Health Care Management. In 1992 he received AHSR’s Distinguished Investigator Award, and in 1995 the Hans Sigrist Foundation Prize for distinguished scientific achievement, as well as the American Risk and Insurance Association’s Elizur Wright Award for Free for All?. In 2000 he and his co-authors received the first Zvi Griliches award for Are Medical Prices Declining? In 2001 and again in 2013 he and his co-authors won the Kenneth J. Arrow Award for the best paper in health economics for How Does Managed Care Do It? and The Oregon Health Insurance Experiment; the latter also won the 2013 HSR Impact Award from AcademyHealth. In 2003 he won the Paul A. Samuelson Certificate of Excellence from TIAA-CREF for Pricing the Priceless.

Selected Publications

Academic Journal/Scholarly Articles

• Newhouse, Joseph P. "Risk Adjustment with an Outside Option." Journal of Health Economics 56 (December 2017): 256-258.
• Chien, Alyna, Joseph P. Newhouse, Lisa I. Iezzoni, Carter R. Petty, Sharon-Lise T. Normand, and Mark A.Schuster. "Socioeconomic Background and Commercial Health Plan Spending." Pediatrics 140.5 (November 2017): 1-10.
• Newhouse, Joseph P., and Sharon-Lise Normand. "Health Policy Trials." New England Journal of Medicine 376 (June 2017): 2160-2167.
• Jacobsona, Mireille G.,Tom Y. Chang, Craig C. Earle, and Joseph P. Newhouse. "Physician Agency and Patient Survival." Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 134 (February 2017): 27-47.
• Newhouse, Joseph P. "Nearly One-Third Of Enrollees In California's Individual Market Missed Opportunities To Receive Financial Assistance." Health Affairs 36.1 (January 2017): 21-31.
• Newhouse, Joseph P., and John D. MacArthur. "Medicare Advantage and Traditional Fee-For-Service Medicare." Population Health Management 19 (November 2016): s4-s5.
• Cotton, Paul, Joseph P. Newhouse, Kevin G. Volpp, A. Mark Fendrick, Susan Lynne Oesterle, Pat Oungpasuk, Ruchi Aggarwal, Gail Wilensky, and Kathleen Sebelius. "Medicare Advantage: Issues, Insights, and Implications for the Future." Population Health Management 19 (November 2016): s1-s8.
• Newhouse, Joseph P. "Challenges Facing Public Retirement Plans." Journal of Pension Economics and Finance 15.3 (July 2016): 249-53.
• Jena, Anupam B., Jie Huang, Bruce Fireman, Vicki Fung, Scott Gazelle, Mary Beth Landrum, Michael Chernew, Joseph P. Newhouse, and John Hsu. "Screening Mammography for Free: Impact of Eliminating Cost Sharing on Cancer Screening Rates." Health Services Research (March 17, 2016).
• Fung, Vicki, Mary Price, Alisa B. Busch, Mary Beth Landrum, Bruce Fireman, Andrew A. Nierenberg, Joseph P. Newhouse, and John Hsu. "Use of Second-Generation Antipsychotics and the Introduction of Generic Risperidone in Medicare Part D." American Journal of Managed Care 22.1 (January 2016): 41-48.

Outside Professional Activities

Transparent Engagement

Harvard Kennedy School is proud of its energetic involvement in the world. To better understand how to solve public problems by improving policy and leadership, we engage directly with policymakers, public leaders, governments, nonprofit organizations, and for-profit businesses whose activities affect those problems. However, we recognize that such engagement can raise questions about perceived and potential conflicts of interest, so we disclose publicly the key professional activities of our faculty outside the Kennedy School.

Outside Professional Activities For Joseph Newhouse

Newhouse is a director of Aetna, which sells both commercial and Medicare health insurance policies. Much of his research involves health insurance. He is also a director of the National Committee for Quality Assurance, which maintains the HEDIS quality reporting system; some of his research uses this tool. These conflicts are disclosed in any publication in which they are relevant.

He has received a speaker honorarium from Ascenion Health.