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| Doug Jacobs, MD, MPH |
Internal Medicine resident Doug Jacobs, MD, MPH, was named on Forbes magazine’s 2018 “Forbes 30 Under 30: Healthcare” list. He was among 600 young entrepreneurs and innovators across 20 industries honored by the publication.
Jacobs was honored for having “shone a light on insurance practices that dissuade patients from getting care.” He identified ways insurance companies were systematically discriminating against patients with chronic conditions and coined the term “adverse tiering” to describe their practice of taking all drugs to treat certain conditions, such as HIV, and making them prohibitively expensive. This work was published in the New England Journal of Medicine, where it rapidly rose to become one of the most-read articles all time.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) subsequently passed a regulation that categorized adverse tiering as a form of discrimination, outlawing it. Following this action, medication prices dropped for HIV-positive Americans. In 2016, HHS included insurance plan design as a distinct category where nondiscrimination law applies. This helped realize a core tenet of health care reform: that insurers could no longer discriminate on the basis of preexisting conditions.
At the Brigham, Jacobs helped spearhead the creation of the Brigham House Staff Council, the first representative body for residents across all training programs in the hospital. He co-chairs the BWH Writer's Group, and remains an avid writer; in the last year he has published op-eds in The New York Times and The Washington Post. He is in the Division of General Medicine's Primary Care track, and practices at the Brigham and Women's Advanced Primary Care Associates, South Huntington.
