Timothy McBride is a professor and associate dean for public health at George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis. He focuses his research on Medicare reform, the uninsured and insurance markets, rural health and long-term care.

Nicole Ravenell Edwards is president and CEO for the Southern Institute on Children and Families, based in South Carolina but with affiliates throughout the South. The institute is a nonprofit organization that works with business leaders to try to improve children’s quality of life, including access to health care. Ravenell is a public policy expert.

Larry Churchill is a professor of medical ethics at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and a professor at the graduate department of religion at the Vanderbilt Divinity School in Nashville, Tenn. An expert on the justice and allocation of health care resources, he wrote Self-Interest and Universal Health Care: Why Well-Insured Americans Should Support Coverage for Everyone.

Ken Thorpe is Robert W. Woodruff professor and chair of the health policy and management department at Emory University in Atlanta. He is an expert in health care financing, insurance and health care reform.

William Custer is an associate professor at Georgia State University’s J. Mack Robinson College of Business in Atlanta. He is an expert in employee benefits, health care financing and health insurance.

Mark Pauly is the Bendheim Professor of health care management at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. He is an expert on medical economics, health policy and health insurance.

Jacob S. Hacker is the Stanley B. Resor Professor of Political Science at Yale University and a Resident Fellow at the Institution for Social and Policy Studies. He edited Health at Risk: America’s Ailing Health System – and How to Heal It.

Jonathan Gruber is an economics professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston. He advised the Obama campaign in 2008 about health care, and The Washington Post has called him the Democratic Party’s most influential health care expert. He has testified before the Senate Finance Committee about financing health care reform.

David Cutler is an economics professor at Harvard University. He wrote the book Your Money or Your Life: Strong Medicine for America’s Healthcare System, which looks at issues involving access to health care.