CBO's Health Team

Today's Wall Street Journal quotes me saying that CBO has between 40 and 50 people working "more than full time" on health reform. Yesterday's Politico included me in an article about "Names, Faces to Watch for In Debate Over Care," and the story referred to "Elmendorf and his team of anonymous analysts."

Clearly, analyzing health reform proposals is a team effort. Indeed, projecting the behavioral consequences and budgetary impact of a variety of proposals to make major changes in a sector that accounts forone-sixth of the U.S. economy poses an enormous analytical challenge. CBOismeeting that challenge because of the skill, knowledge, and hard work of our talented staff (and of our colleagueson the staff ofthe Joint Committee on Taxation, with whom we are collaborating in this effort).

Because CBO believes that its estimating methodology should be as transparent as possible, perhaps our estimating team should be transparent as well. In that spirit, here are the previously anonymous analysts at CBO who deserve a great deal of credit for their fine workanalyzing health reform and related legislative proposals(I realize this list has more than 50 names; that's because some ofthese people have other responsibilities beyond health reform):