Beverly Gossage is a consumer-based health care expert and research fellow with the Show-Me Institute. In addition to training and writing health savings account (HSA) policies for individuals and the self-employed, she helped pioneer them for businesses in Kansas and Missouri. She has testified on health policy bills in both houses of the Kansas and Missouri Legislatures, and serves on the health advisory board of the Flint Hills Center for Public Policy.
On March 5, the Show-Me Institute sponsored Gossage’s presentation to the Missouri Legislature on HSAs and free-market approaches to health insurance reform. The Legislature subsequently drafted HB 818, a market-based reform bill that incorporated many of the ideas Gossage presented. Gov. Matt Blunt signed it into law in June.
Michael R. Pakko is a Research Officer and Economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Saint Louis. He joined the Bank staff in 1993 and has worked in the fields of international economics, macroeconomics and regional economic analysis Dr. Pakko received his bachelor’s degree in socioeconomic policy problems and economics from Michigan State University in 1984 and his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Rochester in 1994. Dr. Pakko has previously held positions as adjunct assistant professor of economics at Saint Louis University, as research assistant at the University of Rochester’s Department of Economics, as an economic analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, and as a research intern at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. Dr. Pakko has recently joined the Saint Louis Fed’s CRE8™, the Center for Regional Economics. The role of CRE8™ is to provide and facilitate rigorous economic analysis of policy issues affecting local, state, and regional economies.
Michael Podgursky is a professor of economics at the University of Missouri-Columbia, where he served as department chair from 1995 to 2005. He has published numerous articles and reports on education policy and teacher quality and co-authored a book titled Teacher Pay and Teacher Quality. Podgursky is a member of the advisory boards of the National Council on Teacher Quality and the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence. From 1980 to 1995, he served on the faculty of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He earned his bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Missouri-Columbia and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
