He began his service to the
United States during
World War II in the
US Navy. He spent much of his time after that thinking and writing about
health care reform. He was a member of the
Truman Commission on the Health Care Needs of the Nation, which, as early as 1952, had supported
national health insurance and the regionalization of
health care delivery. Later, he served on President
John F. Kennedy's
Council of Economic Advisors as a senior staff member (1961–1963). There, he helped to develop the initial legislation for
Medicare, a healthcare model that he continued to advocate throughout his life. Fein had also served on the Board of the Committee for National Health Insurance, under the leadership of former
United Auto Workers President
Douglas Fraser and under
Walter Reuther on a board investigating
malnutrition in the United States. He was a charter member of the
Institute of Medicine (IOM), had received numerous honors for service in
medical economics, and sat on boards of a number of not-for-profit health care institutions. He had authored nine books, the most recent of which was
Lessons Learned: Medicine, Economics and Public Policy, published in November 2009. He joined the Harvard faculty of the
school of medicine and the
John F. Kennedy School of Government in 1968. He also served as senior fellow in the
economics program at the
Brookings Institution in
Washington, D.C. His 1982 paper "What Is Wrong with the Language of Medicine?" in the
New England Journal of Medicine began: A new language is infecting the culture of American medicine. It is the language of the marketplace, of the tradesman, and of the cost accountant. It is a language that depersonalizes both patients and physicians and describes medical care as just another commodity. It is a language that is dangerous. It concluded: A decent medical-care system that helps all the people cannot be built without the language of equity and care. If this language is permitted to die and is completely replaced by the language of efficiency and cost control, all of us — including physicians — will lose something precious. He served as chair of the National Advisory Committee (NAC) for the
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Scholars in Health Policy Research Program from 1994 to 2002 and was its Chair Emeritus until his death. His work included
benefit-cost analysis,
health care financing,
health care workforce policy,
cost containment, the
financing of
medical education, and
health care reform. His first book was
Economics of Mental Illness (1958). His last (2010) book,
Lessons Learned: Medicine, Economics and Public Policy, was built on the various lessons and stories that, as Chair of the NAC, he had presented over the years at the Scholars' Annual Meeting in Aspen. As an invited speaker, he presented his soon-to-be-published book at the "Health Care Reform 2009: Politics and Paranoia" in
Boston on October 21, 2009, sponsored by the Boston
Democratic Socialists of America and Mass-Care. Among colleagues, Fein was admired for his wry, often-humorous
anecdotes drawn from
Jewish culture and over 50 years of experience in the policy arena, which he brought together in his final book,
Learning Lessons: Medicine, Economics, and Public Policy (Transaction Publishers, 2010). ==Achievements==