(Chicago, IL) Conrad Meier, one of the nation’s leading advocates of market-based reform of health care, passed away unexpectedly on March 18, 2005. He was 69 years old.
Meier was a senior fellow for the Chicago-based Heartland Institute and founding managing editor of Health Care News, the Institute’s monthly newspaper devoted to consumer-driven health care. Each month for three-and-a-half years, Meier conveyed his ideas about health care reform to every state and national elected official in the U.S., as well as thousands of civic and business leaders, subscribers, and health care professionals.
“More state elected officials learned about health savings accounts, high-risk pools, and the cost of excessive insurance regulation by reading Conrad Meier’s articles than any other writer in the country,” said Heartland President Joseph Bast. “Conrad had a knack for making complicated issues simple and a dedication to speaking the truth, no matter how unpopular it might be.”
During his career, Meier was a feature writer for Williams and Wilkins medical journals, Missouri state chairman of the health insurance committee of the National Association of Life Underwriters, assistant in research at the Center for Advanced Social Research, University of Missouri-Columbia, and a columnist for Broker News and National Health Underwriter.
Meier also wrote regularly for Medical Sentinel (the journal of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons) and Ideas on Liberty (Foundation for Economic Education). His writing appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Milwaukee Journal, St. Louis Post Dispatch, Columbia Missourian, Oakland Press, Life Association News, Patient Outcomes in Managed Care (Williams and Wilkins), Best’s Review, Illinois Journal of Medicine, Modern Maturity, Financial World, Investor’s Business Daily, USA Today, and elsewhere.
Meier wrote two policy studies on health care reform for The Heartland Institute and one for the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). He wrote and edited hundreds of articles as managing editor of Health Care News from its founding in March 2001 until he stepped down in October 2004 to become a Heartland Senior Fellow. Many of those articles can be found on Heartland’s Web site at www.heartland.org.
Meier is survived by his wife, Zoe Smith, two sons and a daughter, and eight grandchildren.
For more information, please contact Nicholas Tyszka at The Heartland Institute at 312/377-4000 or by e-mail, [email protected].
Joseph Bast is a Senior Fellow at The Heartland Institute. He cofounded Heartland in 1984, serving as executive director then as president & CEO until January 2018. His research and writing focuses on climate change and energy policy.
