News Sources: Congress Considers Healthcare Bills

Sweeping health-care legislation that would affect benefits for millions of children and senior citizens -- as well as the bank accounts of doctors and insurance companies -- comes up for floor votes this week in Congress. Lawmakers will consider proposals to renew a popular federal-state program that provides health insurance for about 6 million children. A bipartisan Senate has compromise that would expand coverage of the State Children's Health Insurance Plan to about 3 million more children. In the House, Democrats are pushing a more ambitious bill that would make major changes to Medicare, the health-care program for older and disabled Americans. Reporters looking for experts to interview on this topic can find them online at the collegenews.org database of news sources and subject matter experts from America's leading liberal arts colleges, including the following (click on names for contact information):

Merton Finkler - Professor of Economics, Lawrence University - Finkler is a specialist in the economics of health care. A former Robert Wood Johnson Faculty Fellow in health care finance, he has served as consultant to California's Kaiser Permanente Medical Group since 1987. He also runs Innovative Health Associates, a private consulting firm specializing in long-term care and managed care evaluation and strategy.

Jack Taylor - Joseph S. Bruno Professor of Retailing, Birmingham-Southern College - Taylor is a nationally recognized expert on such topics as retailing, marketing, marketing of health insurance and related health services.

Thomas Dee - Associate Professor of Economics, Swarthmore College - Dee employs economic and statistical techniques to study policy-relevant behaviors related to health. Dee is director of Swarthmore's public policy program and a faculty research fellow with the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).