Media Advisory: Rice health economics expert to testify in Austin Dec. 10

MEDIA ADVISORY

David Ruth
713-348-6327
david@rice.edu 

Rice health economics expert to testify in Austin Dec. 10

HOUSTON — (Dec. 7, 2018) — Health economics expert Vivian Ho from Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy will provide testimony and take questions  before the Texas Senate Committee on Business and Commerce Dec. 10 at the state Capitol in Austin.

The hearing, which begins at 9 a.m. in Room E1.016, Capitol Extension, will focus on market competition, consolidation practices and federal orders affecting the Texas health insurance marketplace. The Texas Department of Insurance will provide an update on Hurricane Harvey-related property and casualty insurance claims data analysis.

Ho, the James A. Baker III Institute Chair in Health Economics at the Baker Institute’s Center for Health and Biosciences, will speak about physician consolidation during her oral testimony and provide written testimony on insurer and hospital consolidation.

The committee, chaired by state Sen. Kelly Hancock, R-North Richland Hills, will hear from five different panels. Ho will be on the first panel along with Robert Town, the Powell Centennial Professor of American Economic Principles at the University of Texas at Austin.

Ho is also a professor in the Department of Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. Her research examines the effects of economic incentives and regulations on the quality and costs of health care. Her research is widely published in economics, medical and health services research journals. Ho is interviewed regularly by local, state and national news media.

For more information or to schedule an interview with Ho, contact David Ruth, director of national media relations at Rice, at 713-348-6327 or david@rice.edu.

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This news release can be found online at www.news.rice.edu.

Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation’s top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 3,962 undergraduates and 3,027 graduate students, Rice’s undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is just under 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is ranked No. 1 for lots of race/class interaction and No. 2 for quality of life by the Princeton Review. Rice is also rated as a best value among private universities by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance. To read “What they’re saying about Rice,” go to http://tinyurl.com/RiceUniversityoverview.