Jacob S. Hacker: Insights from the Democratic Health Policy Expert

“When I first went on this book tour, I went to Seattle, Washington. My parents came to see me. I was nervous and excited. I arrived at the auditorium and was surprised to see hundreds of people lined up outside. I walked up to the door, and there was a piece of paper taped to it.” Jacob Hacker takes a breath and watches his audience lean in closer. “‘If you are here for the lecture by Jacob Hacker, please take the back door down to the basement.’ It turns out all those people were lined up to hear the man in this picture speak.”

A picture of a grizzly, bundled mountain climber flashes on the projector screen. One slip of the foot would mean certain death. Laughter, followed by awe; the audience takes in the joke, then the picture. After so many lectures, Hacker has his opening down to a science. “It occurred to me that this man was a perfect representation of average people in the economy today. You’re all a little anxious just looking at this picture. That’s what risk does to us.” And with that, Jacob Hacker made risk—that intangible jargon of financiers and insurance salesman—come to life.
“He has been called the ‘Boy Genius’ of the Democratic Party,” WPBA President Anthony W. Orlando said when he introduced Hacker, “but he admits that the ‘boy’ part no longer applies.” If genius could be measured by rate of accomplishment, then the latter half still rings true. In his quick ascendancy to Professor of Political Science at UC Berkely, Hacker has become the health care expert in the national debate.

After graduating summa cum laude from Harvard and getting his PhD at Yale, he released a flurry of books, including an analysis of Bill Clinton’s failed health care reform, a welfare state dissection, and a critical take on the Republican Revolution. His magnum opus, though, came in 2006 when he published The Great Risk Shift: The New Economic Insecurity and the Decline of the American Dream. It was an instant bestseller—smoothly weaving real-life anecdotes into a fierce onslaught of statistics, all of which gave new arguments to an old debate and armed progressives across the country with the ammunition to fight for economic equality and a stronger safety net—and it was to this thesis that he now turned the audience’s attention.

In the next hour, Hacker told a story of a disappearing middle class and an America where economic insecurity had gone from the exception to the rule. “He makes some very compelling arguments,” Orlando said afterward. “No matter where you stand in the debate, you better come armed with some serious facts if you want to keep up with him. It’s for exactly this reason that he’s in such high demand—so much so that his health care plan was the basis for the top three Democratic presidential candidates’ plans. WPBA was very fortunate to host him. Everyone in the audience got a chance to ask questions and talk to him up-close afterward, and we even sold his books at a significant discount. We hope the Wharton community really enjoyed this memorable experience.”

Related posts:

1. “Lessons Learned: The Clinton Debacle & the Future of Health Care” with Jacob Hacker
2. Can America Do Better? Insights from Health Economics
3. Patricia Danzon, Scott Harrington, & Mark Pauly (“Can America Do Better? Insights from Health Economics”)

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