Dana Goldman

Dana Paul Goldman is the dean of the USC Price School of Public Policy, Leonard D. Schaeffer Chair and director of the University of Southern California Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics, and Professor of Public Policy, Pharmacy, and Economics at the Price School and USC School of Pharmacy. He is also an adjunct professor of health services and radiology at UCLA, and a managing director and founding partner, along with Darius Lakdawalla and Tomas J. Philipson, at Precision Heath Economics, a health care consulting firm. Previously held positions include the director of the Bing Center for Health Economics, RAND Royal Center for Health Policy Simulation, and UCLA/RAND Health Services Research Postdoctoral Training Program.

Goldman's professional interests include the innovation of health technology, the future of America's elderly population, the design of insurance, and disparities in health outcomes. More recently, his work has focused on medical innovation and regulation, comparative effectiveness and outcomes research, and patient-reported outcomes in emerging markets

Goldman is also the founding co-editor of the Forum for Health Economics and Policy and has been on the editorial board of Health Affairs, B.E. Journals of Economic Analysis and Policy, and the RAND Journal of Economics, among others. He is a health policy advisor to the Congressional Budget Office and, in 2009, was elected a member of the Institute of Medicine. He is also the 2009 recipient of the Eugene Garfield Economic Impact Prize, in recognition of his outstanding research on how medical research impacts the economy.

He received his B.A. ''summa cum laude'' from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford University.

Goldman’s 1997 article, "Redistributional Consequences of Community Rating" discusses a study done in California where health insurance premiums were based on community ratings. The Patient Protection and Accountable Care Act (PPACA) has been passed through Congress and implementation has commenced in the U.S. healthcare system. Community rating systems will be the basis for health care premiums in the future exchange system. These ratings, pool people in to demographic groups and charge all members a constant rate. The goal of this system is to prevent medical underwriting and decrease the inequities that occur for clients with higher risks of increased medical utilization present in a risk adjusted system. Goldman et al. conducted a study in California that trialed such clusters of insured clients by pooling at the state level, regional level, and metropolitan level. Results from California’s experiment with such a system conclude that the larger the areas pooled, the greater the transfer of costs.

Another challenge to community based rating systems is that lower income neighborhoods with lower healthcare utilization subsidize the healthcare cost of higher income communities that tend to have higher healthcare expenditures.

The health exchange system will not be the only place where community rating systems are utilized. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) (CMS) plans to initiate a modified rating system starting in January 2014, this may lead other insurance companies following suit.

Due to the results of the California experiment and the widespread use of community based rating systems being initiated, it is imperative that some kind of subsidies be used for low income families. Otherwise, these families may be more likely to avoid insurance due to higher premium costs. This result would be counter intuitive to the goals of implementing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in the U.S. healthcare system.

In 2022, Goldman was elected as a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. Provided by Wikipedia