Gary Cohen

Principal

Health Management Associates

San Francisco, CA

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An executive leader in both the public and private sectors, including serving in the Obama Administration, Gary Cohen has held a variety of senior positions during his 30-year career and has extensive legal, business, and regulatory experience and expertise.

Before joining HMA, he served as vice president of government affairs with Blue Shield of California as well as serving as a member of the Board of Trustees with the Blue Shield of California Foundation. In this capacity, he oversaw all strategy and execution of government affairs activities at the state and federal level along with a variety of related long-term, strategic policy initiatives.

He also previously served as vice president of enterprise regulatory strategy and policy with Kaiser Permanente where he led efforts to develop and implement an enterprise-wide regulatory strategy ensuring all policy and regulatory activities were coordinated and consistent.

During his tenure as director of the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight (CCII0), in the Obama Administration, he worked with senior administration officials, state insurance regulators, health plans, and other stakeholder groups to put into place ACA required market-wide reforms and to stand up the federal and state Marketplaces.

Gary served as general counsel to CoveredCA and the California Department of Insurance, where he was responsible for a broad range of legal and policy matters. Among the issues he dealt with were two major health plan mergers, reform of the standard disability policy language permitted in the state, and settlement of bid-rigging allegations against major insurance brokers.

He began his state service as general counsel with the California Public Utilities Commission, where he led the legal strategy in response to the state’s energy crisis. He has also worked as an attorney in the private sector, as a partner at Keker, Van Nest & Peters and Sonnenschein Nath Rosenthal (now Dentons LLP), and at Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company as well as chief of staff to Congressman John Garamendi (D-03).

Gary earned a bachelor’s degree from Brown University and a Juris Doctorate from Stanford.