Death Panels: One More American Health Policy Detective Story

by Greg Vigdor

580 pages, Paperback

Published December 1, 2024

About the author

Greg Vigdor has spent his life working within America’s health care system, trying to improve it. He has now chosen to write about the system with the hope that this will stimulate the type of change that will be good for the people and communities of America.
Born in Hartford, Connecticut, Greg has lived in cities across our nation. His times in Washington, DC, Seattle, Washington, and the American Southwest are important settings for this novel.
Greg has worked in a range of positions and sectors in American health care, providing him a broad and deep perspective on the many issues of the full system. He has served as a policy leader, lobbyist, health care manager, CEO, and many other roles.
One of his more prominent positions was as founder and CEO of the Washington Health Foundation. He created WHF in 1992 through a Rural Hospital Assistance Program. Greg raised funds and soon added to the Foundation’s rural leadership work with a variety of statewide and urban community programs applied across the state of Washington for the next twenty years.
Major achievements were helping over 10,000 Washingtonians each year to access health care services through client support services, providing millions of dollars of support to local communities to improve health locally, and rolling out an array of innovative leadership programs aimed at big system reform. These included the Transforming Health Care, the Healthiest State in the Nation Campaign and Center for People’s Health programs.
In 2013, Greg became the President & CEO of the Arizona Hospital and Health Care Association. His first assignment was to help pass Medicaid Expansion for Arizona-the first Republican controlled state to do so.
In 2016, he took on the challenge of preserving the access protections of the Affordable Care Act by insisting that a replacement must be in place before any repeal. In the absence of such a proposal, he led a statewide effort in Arizona to convince Senator John McCain to vote no on the repeal proposals before Congress.
Other important roles over his career included Executive Director of the Association of Washington Public Hospital Districts, Vice President for Policy and Advocacy at the Washington State Hospital Association, Director of Public Policy for the New Mexico Hospital Association, and Director of Nursing at Mount Sinai Hospital in Hartford, Connecticut.
Greg’s academic credentials include a Masters of Health Administration from the University of Washington with the Program Nomination for Outstanding Student in 1983, a Juris Doctorate from the George Washington University National Law Center with Honors in 1981, and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Connecticut with Distinction in Political Science in 1976. He was chosen to be one of two Fellows for the American Hospital Association/Blue Cross Blue Shield Association prestigious national Health Leadership Fellowship in 1984.
Greg has written and spoken extensively on health and health care topics. He has been recognized for his leadership and innovative approach to health problem solving and he continues to explore new ways to improve health in a volunteer capacity. Among the most important roles in this regard is his current service as the now volunteer President of the Washington Health Foundation and author of The Theory of Irv: A Novel of American Health Policy.