People
Elizabeth Fowler, PhD, JD
Former Director, Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, CMS
Biography
Liz Fowler is a nationally recognized expert in federal health policy and a visionary leader with a proven record of success in both public and private sector executive roles. Most recently, Liz was Deputy Administrator and Director of the Innovation Center at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). In that role, she was responsible for advancing innovative payment and care delivery models in Medicare and Medicaid to promote value-based care on a national scale. Under her leadership, the CMS Innovation Center launched a new strategy focused on accountable care and designed, announced, and administered 37 payment and care delivery reform models impacting nearly 200,000 hospitals, physicians and 57 million patients between 2022 to 2024. These value-based payment models have provided an important testing ground and scaling opportunity for innovative start-ups and health care disrupters.
Prior to leading the Innovation Center, she was Executive Vice President of programs at The Commonwealth Fund and Vice President for Global Health Policy at Johnson & Johnson. In 2011-2012, she served as special assistant to President Obama on health care and economic policy at the National Economic Council to implement the Affordable Care Act (ACA). As Chief Health Counsel at the Senate Finance Committee, she played a major role in the drafting and passage of the ACA in 2010, and she also played a key role drafting the 2003 Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act (MMA). Liz has over 25 years of experience in health policy and health services research. She earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania, a Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and a law degree (J.D.) from the University of Minnesota. She is admitted to the bar in Maryland, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Supreme Court. Liz is a Fellow of the inaugural class of the Aspen Health Innovators Fellowship and was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2022.