On January 29th, Rob over at Raising Kaine
noted that Judy Feder announced her run against Frank Wolf in the VA-10 race. Her campaign's
placeholder website doesn't contain much info yet, but for all those health policy wonks in the dKos community, Judy Feder is the real deal.
And for those living in the area (DC, Northern VA, Western MD and West Virginia), please read up on her and get involved on the ground.
From her Georgetown University bio:
Judy Feder is Professor and Dean of the Georgetown Public Policy Institute. She is one of the nation's leaders in health policy--most particularly, in efforts to understand and improve the nation's health insurance system. A widely published scholar, her three decades of policy research began at the Brookings Institution, continued at the Urban Institute, and, since 1984, has flourished at Georgetown University. Her expertise on the uninsured, Medicare, Medicaid, and long-term care is regularly drawn upon by members of Congress, Executive officials, and the national media.
Feder has also held leadership policy positions, both in the Congress and in the Executive Branch. As staff director of the congressional Pepper Commission (chaired by Senator John D. Rockefeller IV), Feder is widely credited with setting the stage for the health reform debate of the 1990s. She became a key actor in that debate, as a senior official in the Clinton Administration. In her three years as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary at Health and Human Services, Feder helped shape the Administration's health care policy, working intensively with members of Congress and with the national media to promote the expansion of health care coverage.
Feder today pursues her policy leadership first and foremost by educating future policy leaders at Georgetown's Public Policy Institute. She continues her research as co-director (with Sheila Burke) of the Georgetown University Long-term Care Financing Project and as senior advisor to the Kaiser Family Foundation's Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured.
Feder is a former chair and board member of AcademyHealth; a Policy Council Member of the Academy of Public Policy and Management; an elected member of the Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Public Administration and the National Academy of Social Insurance.
Feder is a political scientist, with a B.A. from Brandeis University (1968) and a Master's (1970) and Ph.D. (1977) from Harvard University.
On top of all that, Judy Feder is also a great human being. She will be an effective champion for true reform of the health care system.