Helen Darling

Helen Darling is the president of the National Business Group on Health, a national nonprofit organization devoted to providing practical solutions to its employer-members' important health care problems and representing large employers' perspectives on national health policy issues.

Darling heads the organization’s Institute on Health Care Costs and Solutions, devoted to finding practical solutions to the nation’s growing crisis of rapidly rising costs and affordability of care, on top of continuing problems of patient safety and quality.

Darling plays a pivotal role in many organizations. She serves on the Committee on Performance Measurement of NCQA, the Institute of Medicine’s Roundtable on Evidence-Based Medicine, the Board of the National Quality Forum, and others.

Previously, Darling directed the purchasing of health benefits and disability at Xerox Corporation for 55,000 U.S. employees. Earlier in her career, Darling was an advisor to Senator David Durenberger on the Health Subcommittee of the Senate Finance Committee.

Susan Dentzer

Susan Dentzer is the editor-in-chief of Health Affairs, the nation’s leading journal of health policy. Health Affairs is a peer-reviewed journal that appears bimonthly in print with additional online entries published weekly at http://www.healthaffairs.org/.

Dentzer is an on-air analyst on health issues with The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). At The NewsHour, Dentzer led a unit dedicated to providing in-depth coverage of health care, health policy and Social Security. Prior to joining The NewsHour in 1998, Dentzer was chief economics correspondent and economics columnist for U.S.News & World Report.

She is a member of the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured as well as the advisory board of the California Health Benefits Review Committee. Dentzer is a member of the National Advisory Committee for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Investigator Awards in Health Policy Research.

Dentzer is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and is the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Global Health Council, the world’s largest membership organization of groups involved in global health. She is on the board of directors of the Friends of the National Institute for Nursing Research.

Len Nichols

Len Nichols directs the Health Policy Program at the New America Foundation. Nichols is a health economist and policy analyst who studies ways to combine cost containment with coverage expansion, with an ultimate goal of health insurance coverage for all Americans with shared financial burdens that are sustainable. 

Nichols adds a moral voice to the health policy debate. He has testified frequently before Congress and state legislators and has published widely in a variety of health-related journals on health insurance coverage, financing, and delivery system issues. Most recently, Nichols has worked with Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) on reform legislation (S. 334) that aims to expand coverage and cost-growth containment strategies. 

Before joining New America, Nichols was the vice president of the Center for Studying Health System Change, a principal research associate at the Urban Institute, and the senior advisor for health policy at the Office of Management and Budget during the Clinton reform efforts of 1993–1994. Nichols was also the chair of the economics department at Wellesley College, where he taught for ten years

Margaret E. O'Kane

Since 1990, Margaret E. O’Kane has served as President of the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA), an independent, non-profit organization whose mission is to improve the quality of health care everywhere. Under Ms. O’Kane’s leadership, NCQA has developed broad support among the employer and health plan communities; today many Fortune 100 companies will only do business with NCQA Accredited health plans. About three quarters of the nation’s largest employers use Health Plan Employer Data and Information Set (HEDIS®) data to evaluate the plans that serve their employees.

Ms. O’Kane was named Health Person of the Year in 1996 by the journal Medicine & Health. She also received a 1997 Founder’s Award from The American College of Medical Quality, recognizing NCQA’s efforts to improve managed care quality. In 1999, Ms. O’Kane was elected as a member of the Institute of Medicine, a highly-regarded organization of health care providers, researchers and others that is frequently called on to help shape national health care policy. In 2000, Ms. O’Kane received the Centers for Disease Control’s Champion of Prevention award, the agency’s highest honor. The CDC names a Champion of Prevention infrequently, and only when an individual has made a truly notable contribution to advancing preventive health care.

Ms. O’Kane began her career in health care as a respiratory therapist and went on to earn a master’s degree in Health Administration and Planning from the Johns Hopkins University.