Levinger Lecture

Aetna chief to discuss future of health coverage in United States

On Thursday, Nov. 29, 2001, at 4 p.m., John Rowe, M.D., will discuss “Good Health: Can We Afford It?” in the Salomon Center for Teaching, located on The College Green. Rowe is chairman, president and CEO of Aetna Inc. His lecture will be free and open to the public.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Dr. John Rowe, chairman, president and CEO of Aetna Inc., will present The Paul Levinger Lecture at 4 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 29, 2001, in Room 101 of the Salomon Center for Teaching, located on The College Green.

His talk is titled “Good Health: Can We Afford It?” Rowe will offer his vision of the future of health care financing and insurance in the United States. Aetna is the nation’s largest healthcare insurer. The lecture will be free and open to the public.

As a physician and a former president of a medical school and medical center, Rowe brings an understanding of the patient, doctor and hospital to his work as a health insurance executive.

In his talk, Rowe will examine “why managed care has failed to deliver on promises of controlling costs and delivering quality, and what I see as the future of health insurance in the country.” In addition, he will explore factors that will determine the next stage of health coverage, including economics, technology and litigation.

“We will have a new phase to health insurance in the United States – not national health insurance, but one that will be employer-based,” Rowe said. “I will present my paradigm for what that health insurance will look like, as well as the pathway I think that we should take.”

Rose approaches the issues from an interesting standpoint, said Terrie Wetle, associate dean of medicine for public health and public policy. “He brings a very broad perspective to understanding health care. He knows a great deal about the promise and cost of health care and also how to encourage healthy populations.”

Before joining Aetna, Rowe served as president and CEO of Mount Sinai NYU Health. With an annual budget of $1.8 billion, a staff of 4,000 physicians and total employees of about 14,000, Mount Sinai NYU Health is one of the nation’s largest health care organizations.

Prior to the Mount Sinai NYU Health merger, Rowe was president of The Mount Sinai Hospital and the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. He serves as clinical professor of medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

Previously, Rowe was a professor of medicine and the founding director of the Division on Aging at Harvard Medical School and chief of gerontology at Boston’s Beth Israel Hospital.

Rowe has authored more than 200 scientific publications, mostly in the physiology of the aging process, and a leading textbook of geriatric medicine. He was director of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Successful Aging and is co-author, with Robert Kahn, of Successful Aging (Pantheon, 1998).

In addition, Rowe served on the Board of Governors of the American Board of Internal Medicine and as president of the Gerontological Society of America. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission.

The Paul Levinger Professorship Pro Tem in the Economics of Health Care was endowed in 1987 to honor the memory of Paul Levinger by his wife, the late Ruth N. Levinger, and his daughter and son-in-law, Bette Levinger Cohen and John M. Cohen ’59 M.D.

For more information about the Rowe lecture, call (401) 863-3336.

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