Mark McClellan is senior fellow, director of the Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform, and Leonard D. Schaeffer Chair in Health Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution. Established in 2007, the Engelberg Center provides practical solutions to achieve high-quality, innovative, affordable health care with particular emphasis on identifying opportunities on the national, state and local levels.

A doctor and economist by training, McClellan has a highly distinguished record in public service and academic research. He is a former administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). He also served as a member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers and senior director for health care policy at the White House. In these positions, he developed and implemented major reforms in health policy, including:

• The Medicare prescription drug benefit and other innovative coverage options, including the move from indemnity insurance to personalized, prevention-oriented care;
• Innovative approaches to coverage in Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, including roadmaps that states have used to update and expand coverage and the “Money Follows the Person” initiatives in long-term care;
• The development of the FDA’s Critical Path initiative, regulatory reforms to modernize pharmaceutical manufacturing, efficient risk-management methods to better address safety issues, and reforms to speed the approval of low-cost generic medicines and improve the availability of safe effective treatments; and
• Public-private initiatives to develop better information on the quality and cost of care, and steps to help consumers and providers use this information to improve care, including performance-based provider payment reforms, Health Savings Accounts and Health Reimbursement Arrangements.

Previously, McClellan served in the Clinton administration as deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury for economic policy, where he supervised economic analysis and policy development on a range of domestic policy issues.

McClellan also served as an associate professor of economics and associate professor of medicine with tenure at Stanford University, where he directed Stanford’s Program on Health Outcomes Research; was associate editor of the Journal of Health Economics; and co-principal investigator of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a longitudinal study of the health and economic status of older Americans. He has twice received the Kenneth J. Arrow Award for Outstanding Research in Health Economics.

From time to time, McClellan advises U.S. government officials on health care policy issues. In his capacity as a health policy expert, he is the co-director of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Leaders’ Project on the State of American Health Care; co-chair of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Commission to Build a Healthier America; and chair of the FDA’s Reagan-Udall Foundation. McClellan is also co-chair of the Quality Alliance Steering Committee, sits on the National Quality Forum’s Board of Directors, is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, and is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

McClellan holds an MD from the Harvard University–Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Division of Health Sciences and Technology, a PhD in economics from MIT, an MPA from Harvard University, and a BA from the University of Texas at Austin. He completed his residency training in internal medicine at Boston’s Brigham and Women's Hospital, is board-certified in Internal Medicine, and has been a practicing internist during his career.