The 2026 NJBIZ Health Care Power List includes Prof. Joel Cantor, the founding director of the Rutgers Center for State Health Policy and a longtime leader in health policy research.
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Rutgers Center for State Health Policy
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Many college graduates have some time before they need to figure out their own health insurance coverage. Young adults can typically stay on a parent’s private plan until age 26, said Joel Cantor. Some states even allow dependents to stay on longer than that.
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“The idea was to monitor more closely,” Cantor said. “I don’t recall that we had discussions of imposing penalties, but just to have the state poised to be better positioned to predict when hospitals were getting into trouble.”
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“Health care providers are used to dealing with people who are deeply focused on their health, and that’s not always the case with the unhoused,” Cantor said. “If I don’t have a place to sleep or enough to eat, how can I possibly think about seeing a doctor?”
Still, Cantor said effective collaboration could help organizations stretch limited resources and meet patients where they are.
As he put it, such partnerships are not only necessary, but increasingly essential as “money is going to get tighter everywhere.”
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Cantor pointed out that state Medicaid agencies are feeling more stress than before, as offices are already low on resources for their current work without adding more paperwork each year, and more reach out to those who need to prove their employment.
Prof. Cantor Receives Chancellor’s Lifetime Achievement Award
Professor Joel Cantor received the 2025 Lifetime Distinguished Achievement Award from Rutgers Health Office of the Chancellor.
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Homelessness nearly doubled in 2025 with the lifting of the COVID-era eviction moratorium. Cantor noted that New Jersey has focused additional resources to support residents, but needs federal help. He’s also concerned that President Donald Trump’s recent executive order punishing homelessness as a crime will make things worse.
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“If I were leading a nonprofit that was dependent on those kinds of grants, I’d be very worried,” said Joel Cantor, director of the Rutgers Center for State Health Policy.
What the 2nd Trump administration might mean for health insurance
The last time he held office, Donald Trump “was one vote away from repealing the Affordable Care Act,” said Cantor. “So, it’s likely that he will, at the very least, seek to reduce funding for subsidies in the ACA coverage exchanges and make other changes likely to undermine affordability and market stability in the exchanges.”
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But big government systems take a long time to change, Cantor and others agreed, given the level of detail involved in implanting complex social service programs. “Inertia is on our side” when it comes to protecting changes New Jersey has made in Medicaid, Cantor said.