Catherine McLaughlin, a professor of health management and policy, has been named the vice chairwoman of a panel that will hold a national dialogue on issues related to health care services, delivery and cost.

U.S. Comptroller General David M. Walker announced McLaughlin’s appointment Feb. 28. The 15-member panel will hold hearings and town meetings across the country during the next year, and then make a set of recommendations to President George W. Bush and Congress before March 2007.

“We’ll be studying not just Medicare but the entire health care system,” McLaughlin says. “It’s a very tall order.”

The Citizens Health Care Working Group includes health care consumers, providers, employers and workers, as well as McLaughlin, and chairman Randall L. Johnson, director of Human Resources Strategic Initiatives for Motorola.

The 15th member of the group will be the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services.

“We’re going to address ways to improve health care access and affordability for all Americans, and especially for the 45 million who are currently uninsured,” McLaughlin says.

McLaughlin is a health economist and director of the Economic Research Initiative on the Uninsured at U-M, which is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

McLaughlin has studied various health economics topics.

She has published numerous articles on the impact of HMOs on market competition and health care costs, the determinants of small area variation in hospital utilization and costs, and issues surrounding the working uninsured.