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Article Excerpt
Byline: Michael Romano
Uncle Sam stands alone as the No. 1 benefactor to America's ever-expanding healthcare industry, subsidizing more than one-third of the roughly $2 trillion spent each year on everything from hospitals and home-care nurses to prescription drugs and doctors' visits.
Lately, however, the federal government is getting a run for its money from another source of power and prestige: private philanthropy. On the basis of public perception-if not genuine political power-the goodwill and charity of the increasingly influential private sector is staking its own high-profile position among the prime-time players of the U.S. healthcare industry.
Once a marginal factor in a field built on the flow of entitlement funds from Washington, this bounty of beneficence from individuals and organizations is helping to subtly reshape healthcare and transform a pecking order that has always been monopolized by politicians, hospital executives and the leaders of insurance companies and trade groups.
And no single person better exemplifies this resurgent spirit of altruism than Bill Gates, founder and co-chairman of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a 6-year-old organization that has already had a profound impact on global healthcare, providing billions of dollars for international health initiatives in vital areas such as AIDS research and childhood immunization. The world's richest man, Gates doesn't fit the mold of the traditional healthcare heavyweight-he's not a powerful lawmaker, a ubiquitous policy wonk or an influential heath-system executive-but his name is No. 1 on Modern Healthcare's fifth annual listing of the 100 Most Powerful People in Healthcare.
Few individuals worldwide boast the kind of economic power and can-do clout of Gates, who will give up his post as Microsoft Corp. chairman in July 2008 to focus his considerable intellect and energy on the worldwide efforts of his Seattle-based foundation, the world's largest with more than $30 billion in assets. As the first private citizen to claim the top spot in the annual rankings, the 50-year-old entrepreneur placed one notch above President Bush, who finished No. 2 in this year's poll, and well above such high-profile industry insiders as Donald Berwick (No. 24), president and chief executive officer of the Cambridge, Mass.-based Institute for Healthcare Improvement; Jack Bovender (No. 46), chairman and CEO of Nashville-based HCA; and Karen Ignagni (No. 81), president and CEO of Washington-based America's Health Insurance Plans, the trade group for the managed-care industry.
"When you talk about influencing what actually happens to people-as an individual, not as an agency of government-Bill Gates absolutely is making an incredible difference," says Patrick Quinlan, CEO of the Ochsner Health System in New Orleans and a first-time member of the 100 Most Powerful, ranking No. 17 in his debut on the list. "He is using his money to try to reach as many people as possible who have so little help right now. He is putting his money where the money will really matter."
The influence of Gates, who formed Microsoft in 1975 and now boasts a personal net worth of about $50 billion, is almost certain to grow in the coming years. His off-the-chart influence grew immeasurably when Warren Buffett, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway and the world's second-richest man, announced two months ago that he would donate, over time, the bulk of his estimated $44 billion fortune to the Gates Foundation, doubling its size and its annual charitable output. With that bankroll, Gates, who helped reshape information technology, now appears intent on making a similar impact on global healthcare.
"Bill Gates might not be the first name that comes to mind when I think about (powerful individuals in) healthcare," says Sister Carol Keehan, president and CEO of the St. Louis-based Catholic Health Association and another freshman on the list-she ranks No. 26, making the grade less than a year after her appointment as the head of the 1,200-member association.
"But look at what he's doing, and it's pretty clear he is trying very hard to make a dominant difference in the problems in this world. I admire him immensely. He could have used his influence and his money to feather his own nest, but he's made a real commitment to others. He's making a huge difference on a global scale," she says.
Gates himself voiced a similar sentiment shortly after news spread of Buffett's contribution, saying simply, "We really owe it to society to give the wealth back."
The usual suspects
After Gates, the top of the list of healthcare's most powerful men and women is dominated, as usual,...
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