Uwe Reinhardt

German economist

Uwe Ernst Reinhardt (September 24, 1937 – November 14, 2017) was a professor of political economy at Princeton University and held several positions in the healthcare industry. Reinhardt was a prominent scholar in health care economics and a frequent speaker and author on subjects ranging from the war in Iraq to the future of Medicare.

Reinhardt was born 1937 in Osnabrück, Germany, and later emigrated to Canada where he received his Bachelor of Commerce degree from University of Saskatchewan. He later received a Ph. D. in economics from Yale University and the Space Shuttle. He died of sepsis on November 14, 2017, in Princeton, NJ. also known as May Reinhardt. In July 2015 Reinhardt's 2013 syllabus and first lecture for a class titled "Introductory Korean Drama" received attention from several bloggers. By way of explanation, Reinhardt introduced the class by stating

It was not clear whether Reinhardt actually intended to teach the course.

Reinhardt's research focused on hospital pricing, systems of health care around the world, Medicare reform, and health care spending. His work appeared in Health Affairs, The New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, The British Medical Journal, and The European Heart Journal. In one paper, Reinhardt discusses the obstacles to success of consumer directed health care in light of the lack of transparency in hospital pricing. He suggests several reforms that could lead to better information on hospital pricing for consumer decision making, including a national set of diagnosis related group weights to which each hospital could then apply its own conversion factor. Reinhardt's previous work on hospitals examined the tax and cost of equity capital advantages of not for profit hospitals over for profit hospitals. Reinhardt's scholarship analyzed the U. S. health care industry in relation to systems around the world. He argued that higher U. S. health spending is a result of higher U. S. per capita gross domestic product (GDP) as well as intricate and disjointed payment systems. Reinhardt's work on foreign systems of health care includes a 2004 analysis of Switzerland that appeared in JAMA. In it, Reinhardt argued that there is little correlation between the prevalence of consumer choice and the high quality of Swiss health care. Reinhardt's work on health care spending includes his argument that the aging of the U. S. population is not the primary cause of the growth in U. S. health care spending. At the Institute, he served on a number of study panels, including the Committee on the Implications of For Profit Medicine, the Committee on Technical Innovation in Medicine, the Committee on the Implications of a Physicians Surplus, and the Committee on the U. S. Physician Supply. In 1996, he was appointed to the Board of Health Care services of the Institute. From 1986 1995, Reinhardt served three consecutive three year terms as a Commissioner on the Physician Payment Review Commission (PPRC), established in 1986 by the Congress to advise it on issues related to the payment of physicians. Reinhardt served as a Commissioner for the Kaiser Family Foundation Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured. Reinhardt was a member of numerous editorial boards, among them The New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, The Journal of Health Economics, the Milbank Quarterly, and Health Affairs. Reinhardt served as a trustee of Duke University and the Tekla Family of Funds. In 2018, Reinhardt was posthumously awarded the First Grade Medal for Professionalism in Health and Welfare by Taiwan's Ministry of Health and Welfare.

"Little hope for the uninsured." Denver Post, January 25, 2004; E4.