Center for Policy Design

Walter McClure

Distinguished Senior Fellow and Chairman

Walter McClure

Walter McClure received a BA in philosophy and physics from Yale in 1959 and a PhD in theoretical physics from Florida State in 1967. His dissertation research, on nuclear cluster theory, was performed at the University of Tübingen in Germany, and he co-authored a book on the subject with his professor, Karl Wildermuth.


In 1969 he switched from physics to health care reform policy for reasons, he says, having to do with “relevance”. He worked at InterStudy under Paul Ellwood’s leadership from 1969 to 1981, at which time he left to start the Center for Policy Studies (now the Center for Policy Design). He directed the Center until his retirement for medical reasons in 1990. At InterStudy he worked with colleagues on the HMO strategy for health care reform, among other tasks drafting much of the Federal legislation.


At the Center he developed Large System Architecture, which is a general theory of why organizations do what they do, and a set of methods to strategically redirect their behavior toward the goals society desires of them. With these methods he and his colleagues at the Center developed a health care system reform strategy to get better care for less, and developed a National Health Insurance proposal consonant with this strategy. He assisted Medicare, Pennsylvania and Cleveland to implement the first step of the strategy, severity-adjusted outcomes assessment of providers, before his reluctant retirement.


He remains chair of the board of the Center but for many years was no longer active in its professional work or management. Recently he resumed some of his professional work.

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