George C. Halvorson

George C. Halvorson served as chairman and chief executive officer of Kaiser Permanente from 2002-2013. Kaiser Permanente is the nation’s largest nonprofit health plan and hospital system, serving more than 9 million members and generating $55 billion in annual revenue. He is now Chairman and CEO of the Institute for InterGroup Understanding and also chairs the California First 5 Commission. The Institute works on issues of ethnic and racial conflict. The Commission works on creating optimal health and learning opportunities for the children of California under the age of five years. Halvorson was recently honored with the 2013 HISTalk Health Care IT Lifetime Achievement Award as well as America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) Inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award and National Action Network’s inaugural Health Care Award. In 2012, he was the social media chair for the Global Health Policy Forum and was named No. 6 on Modern Healthcare's annual 100 Most Influential People in Healthcare list. Halvorson has written six health care reform guidebooks, including Ending Racial, Ethnic and Cultural Disparities in American Health Care, Health Care Will Not Reform Itself: A User's Guide to Refocusing and Reforming American Health Care, Health Care Reform Now!, Health Care Co-ops in Uganda, Strong Medicine, and Epidemic of Care. In 2012, he published KP Inside: 101 Letters to Us at Kaiser Permanente, which is a compilation of letters he has written to KP employees each week since September 27, 2007. Prior to joining Kaiser Permanente, Halvorson was president and chief executive officer of HealthPartners, headquartered in Minneapolis, for nearly 18 years. With more than 30 years of health care management experience, he has also held several senior management positions with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, and Health Accord International.