View this article online: https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/west/2003/12/04/34697.htm
Torrance, Calif.-based Keenan & Associates, the largest privately held brokerage firm in California, announced the appointment of Alain C. Enthoven, Ph.D., to the company’s newly formed Advisory Board of thought leaders to bolster its strategy and provide insight into the public sector marketplace.
Sean Smith, CEO of Keenan & Associates, said, “It is a privilege to welcome as our first Advisory Board member Alain C. Enthoven, PhD, the Marriner S. Eccles Professor of Public and Private Management (Emeritus) in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1973.”
On his appointment, Enthoven said, “I am thrilled about the opportunity to join with Keenan and become involved in its public sector programs. Keenan has been one of the pioneers in California in creating employee and consumer choice and quality as the key determinants in health plan selection. Keenan’s launch of the innovative California Public Employer Pool is a clear example of their forward thinking approach to health care delivery.”
Enthoven has been called the father of managed competition — the theory that appropriately managed competition among health care provider organizations can lead to lower costs and higher-quality care for consumers.
Enthoven is a former assistant secretary of defense who served under presidents Kennedy and Johnson. His interest in the health care industry dates back to 1969, when he joined Litton Industries as vice president for economic planning. He then became president of Litton Medical Products. Enthoven first proposed “regulated competition” in a “consumer-choice health plan” in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1978. He coined the term “managed competition” a decade later.
Enthoven designed and proposed the Consumer Choice Health Plan, a plan for universal health insurance based on managed competition in the private sector, while serving as a consultant to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) Secretary Califano and the Carter administration in 1977. He is a consultant to Kaiser Permanente and former chairman of the Health Benefits Advisory Council for CalPERS (California State employees’ medical and hospital care plans). He is also a director of The Integrated Healthcare Association and RxIntelligence, a non-profit research group dedicated to providing physicians and consumers with balanced evaluations of drugs. And serves as chairman of Stanford University’s Committee on Faculty/Staff Human Resources.