Philip Ellis, Ph.D., is President of Ellis Health Policy and serves as an independent consultant on health policy issues and economic analysis — with clients in the pharmaceutical and insurance industries primarily. Previously, he worked on healthcare issues in various positions at the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) for more than 12 years over two tours of duty. He joined CBO in 2002 as a Senior Analyst working on estimates for proposals to add a prescription drug benefit to Medicare. Later he served as a leader of CBO’s health team during the debate over the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2009-10, focusing primarily on estimating the effects of the law’s provisions governing insurance coverage. At that time, the Washington Post said that he “may be the most powerful guy you’ve never heard of in the health-care debate.” In 2011, he moved to UnitedHealth Group to become a Senior Vice President in the Center for Health Reform and Modernization, where he advised on the development of payment reform initiatives and implementation of the ACA.

Phil returned to CBO in 2013 as a Senior Advisor and in 2015 he became a Deputy Assistant Director in the Health, Retirement, and Long-Term Analysis Division. In that capacity, he managed a range of projects focusing primarily on hospital, physician, and drug payments. Before joining CBO in 2002, he was a Senior Advisor in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) at HHS; prior to that, he worked on Medicare reform issues in the Office of Economic Policy at the Treasury Department. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from MIT, an M.P.P. from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, and a B.A. from Stanford University (where he was Phi Beta Kappa). Originally from New York City, and a lifelong fan of the New York Mets, he now lives in the Washington, D.C., area. He is also an avid cyclist of the “old school” — steel bikes, wool jerseys, etc.