Avik Roy
| Avik Roy | |||
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| Basic facts | |||
| Organization: | Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity | ||
| Role: | Co-founder | ||
| Location: | New York, N.Y. | ||
| Expertise: | Healthcare policy | ||
| Affiliation: | Republican | ||
| Education: | •Massachusetts Institute of Technology •Yale University | ||
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Avik Roy is a conservative healthcare policy writer and founder of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, a think tank based in Austin, Texas. Roy formerly worked as a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a free-market think tank based in New York City. Roy, the opinion editor at Forbes, also writes the site's healthcare blog, which has been called "one of the best takes from conservatives on that set of issues."[1]
Career
Avik Roy graduated from MIT with a bachelor's degree in molecular biology; he then graduated from medical school at Yale.[5]
Financial sector
After graduating from Yale Medical School, Roy entered the financial sector, first working as an investment banker for Bain Capital from 2001 to 2004.[6] At Bain, he was an analyst and portfolio manager, and he continued this work in 2004 as a portfolio manager at JP Morgan. In 2008, Roy left JP Morgan to begin his own hedge fund.[7] Roy continued to work in finance, serving as managing partner of New York hedge fund Mymensingh Partners and as an analyst with securities firm Monness Crespi Hardt & Co.[8][9] In 2012, Roy started his own firm, Roy Healthcare Research, which "provides proprietary healthcare investment research to leading institutional investors," according to its website.[10]
Manhattan Institute for Public Policy
- See also: Manhattan Institute for Policy Research
Roy began working with the Manhattan Institute in 2012 as a healthcare policy analyst. The Manhattan Institute is a conservative, New York City-based think tank where research "fellows author white papers, books, and reports; convene conferences; testify at government hearings; and publicize their research and ideas through public speaking and constant media engagement, including op-eds, TV and radio appearances, and blogging."[11] As a senior fellow, Roy researched the Affordable Care Act and entitlement reforms, authoring reports and white papers that proposed conservative alternatives to the ACA and conservative approaches to entitlement reforms.[1]
Mitt Romney presidential campaign, 2012
In 2012, Roy worked as the healthcare advisor for Mitt Romney's (R) presidential campaign, a process he described as a natural outgrowth from his writing on healthcare issues. He said, "I started writing about Obamacare in 2009, 2010, when it first started to go through Congress. My blog just kind of took off as a kind of hub for commentary on health care policy and entitlement reform policy, and one thing led to another. I got involved with the Manhattan Institute and started working for Forbes, and Gov. Romney asked me to join his effort in 2012."[5]
One of Roy's messages during the election was to reframe public perception of Romney's healthcare reforms while Romney was governor of Massachusetts. In a piece for Forbes in 2012, Roy argued that Romney's healthcare reforms were amended and wrongfully implemented by Romney's successor, Deval Patrick (D). Roy focused on Romney's support for an individual mandate, arguing that Romney supported this to require people to buy insurance that covers emergency care but would not require individuals to purchase comprehensive insurance. Roy wrote:[12]
| “ | Romney genuinely strove for a free-market-based solution to the grave problems with Massachusetts’ dysfunctional insurance market. But Romney put too much faith in the willingness of Democrats to implement his ideas, as opposed to their own, especially after Romney left office. Romney’s biggest mistake was the individual mandate. The individual mandate was a loaded gun that Romney handed to his opponents, who used it to force individuals to buy comprehensive insurance they didn’t need.[13] | ” |
Alternative to Affordable Care Act
Roy is a notable contributor to various online publications, including National Review, The Wall Street Journal and USA Today.[1] He most frequently writes on healthcare policy with a special interest in conservative approaches to the Affordable Care Act. Speaking in 2014, Roy explained how he saw his approach as a "conservative" one, saying, "Conservatism is, by definition, cautious about disruption and turbulence. In health care, that’s especially important. When it comes to people’s health insurance and thereby the security of their finances and health care, it’s important to look for modest, gradual reforms."[14] In a 2014 opinion piece for Politico, Roy wrote:[15]
| “ | Conservatives don’t have to repeal Obamacare in order to advance their principles. Indeed, it’s actually possible to take advantage of one of the law’s core provisions—its tax credits for the purchase of private coverage—to reform America’s entire health-entitlement behemoth, and to finally put the country on a fiscally stable trajectory.[13] | ” |
In place of the Affordable Care Act, Roy proposed the "Universal Exchange Plan" in his 2014 white paper report, Transcending Obamacare. The plan would not require the full repeal of the ACA but would repeal the act's individual and employer mandates. Roy's summary of the plan reads, "The Plan would repeal many of the ACA’s cost-increasing insurance mandates, including the individual mandate. But it would preserve the ACA’s guarantee that every American can purchase coverage regardless of preexisting conditions. And it would utilize the concept of using federal premium support subsidies, on a means-tested basis, to defray the cost of private health coverage."[4]
- See also: Avik Roy's "Universal Tax Credit Plan"
Presidential election, 2016
During the primary election season, Roy commented that he was not initially interested in joining a campaign during the primary election. He said, "My plan had been to not really get involved in the primaries, just talk to anyone who cared what I thought and just try to be as helpful to the field as possible."[5]
Rick Perry
- See also: Rick Perry presidential campaign, 2016
In April 2015, RickPAC, Rick Perry's leadership PAC, announced that Roy would join the organization as a senior advisor. At the time, Roy said: "Over the last 15 years, no leader has expanded economic opportunity in more ways for more people than Gov. Rick Perry. I can’t wait to come home to Texas and work with RickPAC because I’m convinced that the creative, conservative reforms he implemented as governor can make life better for every American."[16] Commenting specifically on Perry's appeal, Roy told National Review, "You can’t run a state like Texas for 14 years and run it well without being knowledgeable and without having a view on policy. ... That’s a side of Rick Perry that people haven’t seen."[17]
Perry suspended his campaign on September 11, 2015.[18] After Perry's campaign suspension, Roy spoke with Maria Bartiromo about the Perry campaign, saying, "With the case of Rick Perry, this is the guy who had the strongest economic record in the field. I thought he was tackling the big issues facing the country: the persistence of black poverty, Wall Street reform, the Middle East. But that's not what the polls show people care about. People care a lot about immigration right now, and people are feeling frustrated and feeling like some of these non-politicians will get things done. I'm not sure they're right about that, but that's where they are."[19]
Marco Rubio
- See also: Marco Rubio presidential campaign, 2016
In October 2015, Roy joined the presidential campaign of Marco Rubio as a policy advisor.[3] Alex Conant, Rubio's communications director, said, "Avik is going to be a volunteer adviser for our campaign. We appreciate his support of Marco's agenda for a new American Century."[20] Previously, Roy had commented on Rubio's healthcare plan, calling it "a solid start" and noting, "The plan falls firmly within the conservative health wonk repeal-and-replace consensus." Roy did critique Rubio's plan for not commenting on "the question of how health insurance tax credits should be structured."[21] On March 3, 2016, while serving as an advisor to Rubio, Roy wrote on the proposed healthcare plan of Donald Trump, who Rubio had criticized in an earlier debate for not having a plan at all. When Trump released his healthcare plan, Roy wrote for Forbes, "It has the look and feel of something that a 22-year-old congressional staffer would write for a backbencher based on a cursory review of Wikipedia. ... The end result of Trump’s proposed changes would be far fewer people with health insurance, and far costlier healthcare: precisely the opposite of Trump’s goal of 'covering everybody' and reducing costs."[22]
Rubio suspended his campaign on March 14, 2016.[23]
Comments on Republican Party, 2016
In July 2016, during the Republican National Convention, Roy spoke with Vox on the future of the Republican Party. Roy suggested that the party would be unable to go forward after 2016 because of what Roy saw as two competing impulses in the party: a concern for individual liberty and a concern for white identity politics. Roy told Vox:[24]
| “ | Conservative intellectuals, and conservative politicians, have been in kind of a bubble. We’ve had this view that the voters were with us on conservatism — philosophical, economic conservatism. In reality, the gravitational center of the Republican Party is white nationalism. ... It’s a common observation on the left, but it’s an observation that a lot of us on the right genuinely believed wasn’t true — which is that conservatism has become, and has been for some time, much more about white identity politics than it has been about conservative political philosophy. I think today, even now, a lot of conservatives have not come to terms with that problem.[13] | ” |
Roy went on to predict that the conservative movement and the Republican Party would fundamentally change after 2016, saying, "Either the disruption will come from the Republican Party representing cranky old white people and a new right-of-center party emerging in its place, or a third party will emerge, à la the Republicans emerging from the Whigs in the [1850s]."[24]
Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity
In 2016, Roy co-founded the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, a think tank based in Austin, Texas. According to his bio with the foundation, Roy's Transcending Obamacare was the organization's first publication.[25]
See also
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, "Avik Roy," accessed June 15, 2015
- ↑ P2016, "Perry for President, Inc.," accessed June 15, 2015
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 The Hill, "Rubio lands major conservative health expert," October 12, 2015
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Roy, A. (2014). Transcending Obamacare: A patient-centered plan for near-universal coverage and permanent fiscal solvency. New York, NY: Manhattan Institute for Policy Research
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Austin American-Statesman, "Avik picks Rick (and vice versa): Why Perry being Roy’s boy matters," April 22, 2015
- ↑ Twitter, "Avik Roy Tweet," July 14, 2012
- ↑ FINalternatives, "Former JP Morgan Analyst Preps Hedge Fund," March 1, 2008
- ↑ Forbes, "The Fight To Keep Genentech's Genius," March 12, 2009
- ↑ CBS News, "UPDATED: Immunomedics Ignored, HGS Adored as Annual Rheumatology Confab Kicks Off," October 18, 2009
- ↑ Roy Healthcare Research, "Roy Healthcare Research," accessed August 19, 2016
- ↑ Manhattan Institute, "About," accessed August 19, 2016
- ↑ Forbes, "How Deval Patrick Gutted Romneycare's Market-Oriented Health Reforms," April 12, 2012
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
- ↑ Action for America, "CSA Health Care Interview Series: Interview with Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Avik Roy," December 2, 2014
- ↑ Politico, "Don’t Repeal Obamacare, Transcend It," August 13, 2014
- ↑ RickPAC, "RickPAC Announces Hiring of Avik Roy, Abby McCloskey & Brett Fetterly," accessed June 15, 2015
- ↑ National Review, "Why One of the GOP’s Sharpest Policy Minds Chose to Work for Rick Perry," June 3, 2015
- ↑ CNN, "Rick Perry drops out of presidential race," September 11, 2015
- ↑ Avik Roy YouTube Channel, "Avik Roy on Rick Perry's Presidential Campaign Aftermath 2015-09-14," September 14, 2015
- ↑ Politico, "Rubio's new policy adviser hasn't always had kind words for him," October 12, 2015
- ↑ Forbes, "Marco Rubio Pledges To Repeal And Replace Obamacare -- But With What?" April 14, 2015
- ↑ Forbes, "The Most Important Thing About Donald Trump's Health Reform Plan Is That Trump Didn't Write It," March 3, 2016
- ↑ Politico, "Rubio suspends presidential campaign," March 15, 2016
- ↑ 24.0 24.1 Vox, "A Republican intellectual explains why the Republican Party is going to die," July 25, 2016
- ↑ The Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, "The FREOPP Founders: Avik Roy," accessed August 8, 2017
