This morning our newsletter is dedicated to the memory of my friend and mentor Grace-Marie Turner.

Grace-Marie founded the Galen Institute in 1995 and was its president for 30 years. In that role, she was the leader of the free-market health policy community. Grace-Marie passed away peacefully on May 29, 2025. One of Paragon’s earliest supporters and champions, Grace-Marie was instrumental in providing guidance as a public advisor. A mentor and friend to many, she is remembered for her wisdom and kindness. While certainly not comprehensive, the following is a short list of principal insights from a meaningful life. This list was put together by me, Doug Badger, Laura Trueman, and John Desser.

1. Strive for significance — We have one opportunity with the life given to us by our Creator. Grace-Marie knew that time is our greatest resource, and she made every moment count—whether advancing free-market policy solutions to improve Americans’ lives or cultivating relationships. She led a life of profound significance.
2. Be kind — Grace-Marie always had a warm demeanor, a welcoming smile, and a kind word. She made people feel valued and welcomed.
3. Seek common ground and include diverse perspectives — As the leader of the Consensus Group, Grace-Marie knew that disagreements—sometimes fierce—were inevitable. Yet she understood the importance of forging unity among free-market organizations and individuals. She made sure everyone felt heard as she deftly led Consensus Group meetings.
4. Be positive and encouraging — Grace-Marie often made you feel that you were doing the most important work and were uniquely positioned to do it. Her optimism and positivity were grounded in her strong Catholic faith.
5. Seize opportunities and work together — Even while battling her illness and knowing her time was limited, Grace-Marie emphasized the importance of working together to seize opportunities—especially around elections—to advance free-market health reforms.
6. Work hard — Grace-Marie worked tirelessly, even into her 70s. For many years, the Galen Institute was the leading public policy organization critically evaluating government programs and developing market-based reforms. Grace-Marie wore many hats—thought leader, head of the Consensus Group, writer of policy analyses and her weekly newsletter, editor (for many years to me and Doug Badger), fundraiser, commentator, congressional witness (more than any other free-market health policy expert in recent decades), and tireless promoter of free-market health reforms nationwide.
7. Communicate clearly — Drawing on her early experience as a reporter, Grace-Marie was an exceptionally gifted writer and speaker. She could translate dense policy issues into language that the average member of Congress—and the public—could understand. She was the best editor Doug and I ever had. Her clarity and thoughtfulness made her a frequent and valued congressional witness.
8. Freely share the credit — Grace-Marie understood the egos of her colleagues and the importance of recognizing everyone’s contributions, big and small. She preferred to shine the spotlight on others and make them feel valued rather than seeking credit for herself.
9. Be rigorous and detail-oriented — Grace-Marie had an eye for detail and process to ensure that the Galen Institute’s materials were rigorous, mistake-free, and precise.
10. Expand reach beyond policy wonks — Grace-Marie recognized that advancing free-market reforms required engaging more than think-tank experts. She cultivated relationships with frontline practitioners — hospital administrators, physicians, insurance brokers, patients, retirees, small business owners, caregivers, entrepreneurs, and innovators — who gave her real-world insights. Her “kitchen cabinet” of diverse voices grounded her work and strengthened her leadership of the Consensus Group.
11. Value one-on-one conversations — Grace-Marie knew that a phone call or an in-person conversation was often more effective at resolving thorny issues than an email or text.
12. Support your champions — Whether helping a member of Congress, a staffer, or a Consensus Group project, Grace-Marie excelled at identifying needs and delivering. She showcased her creativity and consensus-building skills along the way.
13. Be flexible in strategy — For Grace-Marie, there was never a “my way or the highway” approach. She never compromised on principles, but she recognized that different paths could lead to the same goal.
14. Be bipartisan — Whenever possible, Grace-Marie sought bipartisan collaboration to advance health reforms.

Reflections on Grace-Marie’s Life and Work

The following are short vignettes from the friends, colleagues, and mentees who knew Grace-Marie best.

Doug Badger
Former Senior Research Fellow at Galen Institute

The enduring image of Grace-Marie is of a woman — as strong as she was humble — presiding over meetings of fractious and mostly male egos, each convinced that he or she alone was the true conservative. Her mission was to distill consensus out of contention, to formulate policies that would make medical care more accessible and affordable. She called it the Consensus Group, and the name was well-chosen.

Grace-Marie sought consensus, not mere compromise, to clarify values and goals before rushing into disputes over means. And she largely succeeded, helping unite conservative health policy analysts throughout three decades of debates, from ClintonCare to ObamaCare. She did this through the discipline of listening, taking care to make each person heard. She presided but often seemed to make herself invisible as others seized the stage. She had a preternatural sense of when to intervene and when to hold her peace.

Grace-Marie knew that obnoxiousness and offensiveness weren’t indicia of principle. She knew in her bones that decentralized decision-making (markets) offered a better path to expanding health care access than the hubris of centralized planners. She made it clear that health policy debates were not over whether to make the best medical care available to the most people, but over how best to do it. Her capacity to apply her convictions to the issue at hand without denigrating the views of those who disagreed made her an effective witness at dozens of congressional hearings. Grace-Marie was one of a kind. Our grief at her passing is deepened by the sense that she can never be replaced.
 
Brian Blase
President of Paragon Health Institute
Former Senior Fellow at the Galen Institute

Grace-Marie was the founder of the Galen Institute and served as its president for 30 years. In that role, she was the unquestioned consensus builder within the free-market health policy community. I had the privilege of working for Grace-Marie at Galen for nearly three years after I left the White House and before I launched Paragon. I learned so much about how to run a health policy think tank from Grace-Marie.

Grace-Marie was a constant source of encouragement who affirmed people and their contributions. She was intellectually rigorous and an exceptionally clear communicator. Grace-Marie helped me launch Paragon and guided me through many important decisions. Although her health policy achievements and influence were profound, her legacy is also evident in the hundreds of people she mentored during her career, including me. In fact, I doubt we would have been able to launch Paragon without Grace-Marie’s achievements and the example of Galen. The legacy of Galen and Grace-Marie will live on with Paragon.
 
Laura Trueman
Former Consultant to the Galen Institute

Grace-Marie understood that health policy reforms which rate an “A+” in economic theory — but are incomprehensible or obtuse to the realities of health care stakeholder interests and experience — would suffer. Grace-Marie listened carefully to all the major industry sectors dependent upon government programs to deliver health care but remained fiercely independent of their economic interests. She learned from them — and educated them — and the result was to find areas of common ground where the think tank world and various industry advocates could be united in pushing for improvements to benefit patients. This was a gift to Capitol Hill staff and members, as they can devote enormous time to reconciling competing interests and policies, even amongst the conservative movement.

Finally, Grace-Marie was three-dimensional, leading with heart, intellect, and compassion to foster human connection. Receiving her weekly newsletters was informative, but could also surprise and delight. She wrote on the magic of attending a Smithsonian exhibit on King Tut and on the passing of Queen Elizabeth. Noting Londoners’ effusive praise for the Queen, Grace-Marie hoped their outpouring “rekindles the understanding of our essential human need for goodness and humility.” In the Washington world, we have been nurtured and made better by the goodness and humility by which Grace-Marie lived her life.
 
John Desser
Vice-President & Head of Government Affairs at HealthEquity

Ever since the early 1990s when the Heritage Foundation coordinated meetings to create a conservative alternative to the Clinton Health Reform proposal, there have been efforts with varying levels of success to pair the conservative health policy intelligentsia with private sector stakeholders (doctors, hospitals, employers, insurers, and health product and therapy manufacturers) to have a unified voice in support of market-based reforms as opposed to government control.

In any case, the painstaking and laborious task of navigating the personalities (and egos) of sometimes 20 to 30 or more conservative health policy experts (some on the phone and most in person) who had a real penchant for hearing themselves speak, would require someone with a very special combination of policy chops and personal charm and tact. Grace-Marie literally embodied those two requirements simultaneously.

It was because of Grace-Marie’s deft handling of the Consensus Group that I was inspired to found the Coalition for Affordable Health Coverage in an attempt to rally the forces (both intellectual and lobbying) to support free market health policy reforms. That work and Grace-Marie’s leadership significantly contributed to the enactment of the Medicare Modernization Act in 2003 (including HSAs). I will never forget how ecstatic she was and the twinkle in her eye at the signing ceremony for that legislation.

It is no exaggeration to say that Grace-Marie was at the forefront of every major health policy debate in Washington and around state capitals, shepherding and driving collaboration for sound health policy for the last 35 years.