Sobel to Pursue Innovative Health Care Policy

By Robert Polner

The year Martin Sobel spent working at a Long Island dental insurance company, which he calls “just a job I had fallen into,” he stumbled upon his passion — health care policy.

At the time, dentists were dropping out as medical providers for low-income families who had signed up for government-funded health insurance. The reason: Covered or not, many younger patients weren’t showing up for oral treatments.

Sobel helped implement a way to keep dentists in the provider pool, offering them a financial bonus for reeling in 2- to 18-year-olds for consistent cleanings and checkups.

“It helped at the time,” said Sobel, for whom the experience, in 2003, along with a simultaneous volunteer stint at the Lymphatic Research Foundation, heightened his awareness of challenges in health care and the possibilities for understanding and tackling them.

Sobel entered NYU’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service in the spring of 2005 and is receiving his Master’s in Public Administration with a specialization in health finance and subspecialty in policy.

He is the recipient of a prestigious David A. Winston Health Policy Fellowship, giving him a year-long, post-graduate opportunity to learn about health policy in Washington, D.C. Sobel, who is 26, called the fellowship “an extreme honor and a great opportunity” that will expose him to a wide range of leading decision makers and experts and let him steep himself in a project of personal interest for nine months.

At NYU Wagner, Sobel, who grew up in Plainview, N.Y., was quick to study microeconomics. He’d already learned that “whenever you want to do anything, the first questions are, `What is it going to cost, and who’s going to pay? In other words: resources are limited, and health care is no exception to the rule.” His studies helped him understand why that was so.

He soon became a microeconomics tutor, the vice president of the Wagner student association, and a peer adviser, and was a recipient of the Judge Charles H. and Joan Tenney Memorial Scholarship for academic and extracurricular accomplishment.

Sobel had two other formative work experiences through NYU Wagner. He was a research and analysis intern at the Long-Term Care Community Coalition, and helped produce a report assessing the precision of New York State surveyors of nursing home care. He also worked as an administrative health resident at the NY Harbor Healthcare System, a U.S. Veterans Administration hospital.

Looking back fondly at his graduate education, Sobel said, “I took a proactive approach of learning what’s out there, and asking people to help me or provide advice. Things are out there. You have to tap into them.”

“I want to come back to this city, be part of the alumni association, and help others get some of the opportunities I’ve gotten,” he said. “NYU Wagner has one of the top, if not the top, health care management programs in the country.”