Heritage Foundation Leadership for America

Edmund F. Haislmaier is an expert in health care policy and markets at The Heritage Foundation – and is frequently asked to assist federal and state lawmakers in designing and drafting health reform proposals and legislation.

In 2006, Massachusetts enacted a major health reform plan that included health insurance reforms designed by Haislmaier. His innovation was to develop a blueprint for how states can use their authority to regulate insurance to create a consumer-centered health insurance market. Under the approach, employers can opt to enroll their workers in a state health insurance "exchange," through which each worker then buys coverage of his or her choice. Thus, employers avoid the hassles of having to administer a group plan while each worker can pick the coverage he or she wants and take it from job to job – all without losing the current tax preferences and other benefits of employer-sponsored insurance. Since Gov. Mitt Romney signed the Massachusetts reforms into law in April 2006, 15 more states have asked Haislmaier and his colleagues to help them develop similar consumer-focused solutions for their health systems.

Haislmaier's expertise also covers: health care tax policy, Medicare, Medicaid, foreign health systems, pharmaceuticals, and health care price controls. He is in demand as a speaker at conferences on health policy and has testified before numerous federal and state legislative committees. He also appears as a guest on television news shows, and his commentaries have been published in The Washington Times and National Review Online.

Before rejoining Heritage in 2005 as a Research Fellow, Haislmaier was a health policy consultant from1998-2004 and director of health care policy in Pfizer Inc.'s Corporate Strategic Planning and Policy division from 1994-1997. He originally joined Heritage in 1987 as the think tank's first-ever health care Policy Analyst and was named a Senior Policy Analyst in 1994. In 2007, he was named a Senior Research Fellow.

He is also a member of the board of directors of the National Center for Public Policy Research. Haislmaier holds a bachelor's degree in history from St. Mary's College in Maryland.