Robert Moffit

Director, Center for Health Policy Studies

Robert Moffit is a 25-year veteran of Washington policymaking. A former senior official at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of Personnel Management under President Ronald Reagan, he specializes in Medicare reform, health insurance, and other health policy issues. He is one of Washington’s chief proponents of consumer-based health care.

After joining Heritage in 1991, Moffit’s first major task was to frame Heritage’s response to President Clinton’s plan to nationalize the country’s health care system. He started by isolating himself in a room with nothing but the 1,342-page proposal and a few yellow legal pads. After five days of reading and taking notes, Moffit had drafted The Heritage Foundation’s analysis of the Clintons’ mammoth plan. His efforts paid off in 1993. The Washington Post ran a feature story detailing Moffit’s criticisms of the Clinton proposal, and newspapers around the country praised Heritage’s proposal for a consumer-driven health care policy that would provide tax credits to help people buy their health insurance from whomever they choose.

Nearly a decade later, debates continue over how to reform Medicare, how to ensure access to prescription drugs, and how to improve healthcare coverage levels. Moffit continues to be an advocate of a consumer-driven approach: He recommends that the government adopt a program for Medicare similar to the Federal Employee Health Benefits Plan (FEHBP), which Moffit became familiar with while working at OPM, the agency that runs the program. FEHBP allows Members of Congress and federal workers to select coverage from a variety of competing health plans. In 1992, Moffit chastised Congress for “keeping this system exclusively for itself and federal workers while considering ways to impose vastly inferior systems on almost all [other] Americans.”

But health care isn’t Moffit’s only concern. He’s also credited with being the first major policy analyst to cite Great Britain’s partially privatized social security system with hopes of improving on that model to build a similar system in the United States. In crime, Moffit co-wrote “Making America Safer,” a how-to guide for local governments to better support their police departments with former Attorney General Edwin Meese III, now a Heritage Distinguished Fellow. He also co-edited “School Choice 2001: What’s Happening in the States.”

Moffit received his B.A in political science from LaSalle University in Philadelphia and his doctorate from the University of Arizona. During the Reagan Administration, he served as the Assistant Director of Congressional Relations in the Office of Personal Management and as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services.