Mark A. Peterson, PhD, is a senior fellow at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and professor in the Department of Public Policy at the UCLA Meyer and Renee Luskin School of Public Affairs. He is also a professor in the Department of Political Science at the Division of Social Science in the UCLA College, and a professor at the UCLA School of Law.
A specialist on American national institutions and the policy process, Peterson’s scholarship focuses on the Presidency, Congress, interest groups, and public opinion, evaluating interactions among them, and their implications for policymaking, both within the general domain of domestic policy and with special attention to national health care policy, Medicare reform, and HIV/AIDS politics and policy. He also studies the role of research evidence in policymaking, including the contextual factors that promote or inhibit its influence.
His books include Legislating Together: The White House and Capitol Hill from Eisenhower to Reagan; Institutions of American Democracy: A Republic Divided (co-authored); and edited or co-edited Institutions of American Democracy: The Executive Branch; Healthy Markets? The New Competition in Medical Care; Uncertain Times: Kenneth Arrow and the Changing Economics of Health Care; and the four-volume series, Health Politics and Policy. For nine years he was the editor of the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law.
Peterson was a founding team member of the Blue Sky Health Initiative to transform the U.S. health and health care system, which advised Congress and the executive branch on the inclusion of population health strategies in the Affordable Care Act. As an American Political Science Association (APSA) Congressional Fellow, he was a legislative assistant for health policy for U.S. Senator Tom Daschle. He also served on the National Academy of Social Insurance's Study Panel on Medicare and Markets and on the Health Policy Advisory Committee for the Barack Obama for President Campaign. He chaired the National Advisory Committees for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Scholars in Health Policy Research program and its Changes in Health Care Financing and Organization (HCFO) program, and was a member of the National Advisory Committees for RWJF’s Investigator Awards in Health Policy Research Program and Center for Health Policy at the University of New Mexico.
A past elected member of the Council of the American Political Science Association, Peterson is a founding member of the Association's Organized Section on Health Politics and Policy, and was elected president of its Organized Section on Public Policy. He has chaired the University of California Academic Senate's Health Care Task Force. Peterson is an elected member of the National Academy of Social Insurance and recipient of the Richard E. Neustadt Award from the APSA's Presidents and Executive Organized Section, the APSA's E. E. Schattschneider Award, the Pi Sigma Alpha Award from the Midwest Political Science Association, and a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator Award in Health Policy Research.
Peterson received his undergraduate degree, master of arts, and doctorate in political science from the University of Michigan.
And though Trump has publicly distanced himself from the conservative Project 2025 playbook, many of its proposals overlap with Trump’s agenda and the Republican Party platform. As such, analysts say its detailed proposals on opioid addiction, contraception, mental health treatment and more bear watching.
“I think everything is on the table,” said Gerald Kominski, a senior fellow at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.
[Later in the article]
Mark A. Peterson, a professor at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, said that despite continued jabs at the law, “it’s very unlikely that Republicans will want to take on the Affordable Care Act. It did not go well for them last time ... and now the Affordable Care Act is more popular than ever.”