Peter Hasselbacher, MD, M.D.

I began my career as an academic physician training at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and the Univ. of Pennsylvania. I joined the faculties of the Univ. of Pennsylvania and Dartmouth rising to tenured Professor of Medicine at UofL. I am board certified in Internal Medicine, Rheumatology, Diagnostic Laboratory Immunology, and Medical Management. I chaired the national Patient and Community Services Committee of the Arthritis Foundation. I am considered a strong patient advocate. In the 1990s, because of how a changing healthcare system was effecting both my clinical and teaching activities, I shifted much of my academic activities to health policy research and government affairs. To learn how the healthcare system works, I served a year as Vice President for Medical Affairs of a new Blue Cross-affiliated health insurance company. I earned the designation as a Certified Physician Executive from the ACPE. I spent a sabbatical in Kentucky’s Cabinet of Health Services with a subsequent Fellowship exploring Kentucky’s new digital hospital discharge database. My learning experiences in health policy culminated in 1997-98 when I became a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow and American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow in Washington DC. I spent a year of service in DC as a Fellow on the Senate Finance Committee then chaired by Sen. William V. Roth of Delaware. I returned to the University of Louisville as Assistant Vice Presidents for Government Relations and for External Affairs at both the state and national levels. I served on the Steering Committee and as Chairman of the joint Government Relation Committees of the Association of American Medical Colleges and the National Association of State Universities and Land-grant Colleges. In 2005 I retired from my full-time faculty and administration positions as Emeritus Professor of Medicine. I seized the opportunity to speak and publish in my own voice and founded the Kentucky Health Policy Institute, a registered Kentucky not-for-profit organization. The major focus of my writing in recent years has been on the opioid abuse, medical overuse and misuse, and the utilization and cost of drugs. Since the Covid-19 pandemic I have written of little else! I have often been approached and quoted by local and other journalists for my opinions.