Whom the Candidates Listen to on Healthcare

Clinton

Formerly senior healthcare adviser to President Clinton, Chris Jennings worked closely with Hillary Clinton, then first lady, on the 1993-94 healthcare reform effort. Now a senior adviser to Clinton's presidential campaign, he has a health policy consulting firm in Washington, D.C. Neera Tanden, Clinton's campaign policy director, helped develop and is overseeing the rollout of Clinton's current plan. She was senior adviser to the first lady in the Clinton White House.

Obama

Barack Obama adviser David Cutler is a Harvard professor of applied economics who served on the Council of Economic Advisers and the National Economic Council during the Clinton administration. He worked on the Clinton healthcare reform plan in the 1990s. David Blumenthal, another adviser, is a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and health policy professor at Harvard and has done extensive research on healthcare reform strategies and information technology costs.

McCain

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, John McCain's top domestic policy adviser, is a former Congressional Budget Office director who has been instrumental in shaping the senator's healthcare reform plan. McCain adviser Tom Miller is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. The former senior health economist for the congressional Joint Economic Committee takes a particular interest in consumer-driven healthcare.