The Century Foundation (TCF), a leading progressive think tank, today announced that Michelle Sternthal and Daniel Bustillo are joining its healthcare team as visiting senior fellows. Sternthal, a healthcare, consumer protection, and economic policy expert, will focus on strengthening TCF’s healthcare oversight capacity in the lead-up to the 120th Congress. Bustillo, executive director of the 1199SEIU Training and Employment Funds, brings deep expertise in the workforce that keeps the healthcare system running. They join a growing TCF healthcare team working to build a system that serves as a cornerstone of an equitable economy.
The Century Foundation is expanding its healthcare work because Americans are demanding more than a return to the status quo. TCF’s polling found that two-thirds of voters (66 percent) want either new public coverage options or a complete overhaul of the healthcare system. And more than half of Americans (53 percent) cut back on care or took on debt in the past year because of healthcare costs. The Century Foundation treats healthcare as a core economic issue, working to advance a system that keeps families out of medical debt, sustains millions of good jobs, and strengthens the broader economy while bringing down the skyrocketing cost of care.
Sternthal’s work will expand TCF’s capacity to use congressional oversight to scrutinize and root out the corporate practices—including medical debt, profiteering, nefarious billing practices, and claims denials—that drive up costs and keep patients from the care they need. That kind of oversight is exactly what voters are asking for: in TCF’s polling, two in three (67 percent) said stopping hospitals from charging excessive prices should be a top federal priority, the strongest result among the seven healthcare cost-cutting policies tested.
Bustillo brings a workforce perspective to that agenda, leading a labor-management fund that trains healthcare workers for good careers. He and Sternthal join TCF’s new chief economist, Kyle K. Moore, whose research on the links between racial economic disparities and health inequity brings a public health lens to TCF’s economic work; Elizabeth Dawes and Michaela Minnis, who lead TCF’s work to advance Black maternal health and universal maternal healthcare; and Kody Kinsley, former North Carolina Secretary of Health and Human Services, who pioneered a first-in-the-nation program to cancel $6.5 billion in medical debt for 2.5 million North Carolinians, at no cost to the state.
“Americans are telling us that rolling back Trump’s healthcare cuts is the bare minimum—they want a system that actually works for them,” said Angela Hanks, Chief of Policy Programs at The Century Foundation. “That means holding the industry accountable for the practices driving up costs, and recognizing that a strong health care system is the backbone of a fair economy, for patients and for the workers who keep it running. Michelle and Daniel bring exactly the expertise we need on both fronts, and together with the rest of our team, they’ll help TCF chart the structural changes to our healthcare system people are demanding. I’m thrilled to welcome them both.”
Bios
Michelle Sternthal works at the intersection of healthcare, consumer protection, and economic policy. At TCF, she will focus on strengthening the organization’s healthcare oversight capacity and identifying political and policy opportunities to advance healthcare affordability and counter corporate predatory practices, including medical debt, profiteering, and claims denials. Sternthal has spent more than twenty years leading advocacy on healthcare and the economy, with a focus on eliminating racial and ethnic health inequities. She previously served as director of government affairs at Community Catalyst and managing director of advocacy and policy at the Roosevelt Institute, and held policy roles at the Main Street Alliance and March of Dimes. Sternthal holds a PhD in sociology and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in social epidemiology.
Daniel Bustillo is executive director of the 1199SEIU Training and Employment Funds (TEF), which provides workforce development, adult education, job placement, and quality improvement programs to more than 700 healthcare employers and 275,000 covered workers in New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Florida, serving both 1199SEIU members and non-union healthcare workers. Previously, Bustillo was executive director of the Healthcare Career Advancement Program (H-CAP), a national organization of SEIU union locals and healthcare employers partnering to develop quality healthcare career education models for high-road jobs that increase equity in the healthcare workforce. At H-CAP, he led policy and programmatic initiatives to support healthcare workers and caregivers, including the Center for Equity and Job Quality in Long-Term Care and the National Center for Healthcare Apprenticeships.
Bustillo chairs the Board of Directors of the National Skills Coalition, serves as president of the H-CAP Education Association, and is a member of the NYC Workforce Development Board. He is a two-time appointee to the U.S. Secretary of Labor’s Advisory Committee on Apprenticeship and was a 2022–23 Aspen Institute job quality fellow. Bustillo holds a bachelor of science in finance from Syracuse University, a master of science from the Columbia University School of Social Work, and a master of science in organizational change management from The New School, and has studied in the Doctoral Program for Social Policy Analysis and Administration at Columbia University.
TCF Expands Healthcare Team with Two Leading Experts as Visiting Senior Fellows
The Century Foundation (TCF), a leading progressive think tank, today announced that Michelle Sternthal and Daniel Bustillo are joining its healthcare team as visiting senior fellows. Sternthal, a healthcare, consumer protection, and economic policy expert, will focus on strengthening TCF’s healthcare oversight capacity in the lead-up to the 120th Congress. Bustillo, executive director of the 1199SEIU Training and Employment Funds, brings deep expertise in the workforce that keeps the healthcare system running. They join a growing TCF healthcare team working to build a system that serves as a cornerstone of an equitable economy.
The Century Foundation is expanding its healthcare work because Americans are demanding more than a return to the status quo. TCF’s polling found that two-thirds of voters (66 percent) want either new public coverage options or a complete overhaul of the healthcare system. And more than half of Americans (53 percent) cut back on care or took on debt in the past year because of healthcare costs. The Century Foundation treats healthcare as a core economic issue, working to advance a system that keeps families out of medical debt, sustains millions of good jobs, and strengthens the broader economy while bringing down the skyrocketing cost of care.
Sternthal’s work will expand TCF’s capacity to use congressional oversight to scrutinize and root out the corporate practices—including medical debt, profiteering, nefarious billing practices, and claims denials—that drive up costs and keep patients from the care they need. That kind of oversight is exactly what voters are asking for: in TCF’s polling, two in three (67 percent) said stopping hospitals from charging excessive prices should be a top federal priority, the strongest result among the seven healthcare cost-cutting policies tested.
Bustillo brings a workforce perspective to that agenda, leading a labor-management fund that trains healthcare workers for good careers. He and Sternthal join TCF’s new chief economist, Kyle K. Moore, whose research on the links between racial economic disparities and health inequity brings a public health lens to TCF’s economic work; Elizabeth Dawes and Michaela Minnis, who lead TCF’s work to advance Black maternal health and universal maternal healthcare; and Kody Kinsley, former North Carolina Secretary of Health and Human Services, who pioneered a first-in-the-nation program to cancel $6.5 billion in medical debt for 2.5 million North Carolinians, at no cost to the state.
“Americans are telling us that rolling back Trump’s healthcare cuts is the bare minimum—they want a system that actually works for them,” said Angela Hanks, Chief of Policy Programs at The Century Foundation. “That means holding the industry accountable for the practices driving up costs, and recognizing that a strong health care system is the backbone of a fair economy, for patients and for the workers who keep it running. Michelle and Daniel bring exactly the expertise we need on both fronts, and together with the rest of our team, they’ll help TCF chart the structural changes to our healthcare system people are demanding. I’m thrilled to welcome them both.”
Bios
Michelle Sternthal works at the intersection of healthcare, consumer protection, and economic policy. At TCF, she will focus on strengthening the organization’s healthcare oversight capacity and identifying political and policy opportunities to advance healthcare affordability and counter corporate predatory practices, including medical debt, profiteering, and claims denials. Sternthal has spent more than twenty years leading advocacy on healthcare and the economy, with a focus on eliminating racial and ethnic health inequities. She previously served as director of government affairs at Community Catalyst and managing director of advocacy and policy at the Roosevelt Institute, and held policy roles at the Main Street Alliance and March of Dimes. Sternthal holds a PhD in sociology and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in social epidemiology.
Daniel Bustillo is executive director of the 1199SEIU Training and Employment Funds (TEF), which provides workforce development, adult education, job placement, and quality improvement programs to more than 700 healthcare employers and 275,000 covered workers in New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Florida, serving both 1199SEIU members and non-union healthcare workers. Previously, Bustillo was executive director of the Healthcare Career Advancement Program (H-CAP), a national organization of SEIU union locals and healthcare employers partnering to develop quality healthcare career education models for high-road jobs that increase equity in the healthcare workforce. At H-CAP, he led policy and programmatic initiatives to support healthcare workers and caregivers, including the Center for Equity and Job Quality in Long-Term Care and the National Center for Healthcare Apprenticeships.
Bustillo chairs the Board of Directors of the National Skills Coalition, serves as president of the H-CAP Education Association, and is a member of the NYC Workforce Development Board. He is a two-time appointee to the U.S. Secretary of Labor’s Advisory Committee on Apprenticeship and was a 2022–23 Aspen Institute job quality fellow. Bustillo holds a bachelor of science in finance from Syracuse University, a master of science from the Columbia University School of Social Work, and a master of science in organizational change management from The New School, and has studied in the Doctoral Program for Social Policy Analysis and Administration at Columbia University.