Paul Nathanson, Executive Director

Paul Nathanson returns to NSCLC after having served as the first Executive Director of NSCLC from 1972-1980. He was the director of the University of New Mexico Institute of Public Law and a member of the faculty of the University’s law school from 1980 until 2005.  He is now Emeritus Faculty at the Law School. He has served as co-chair of the University of New Mexico Center for Aging Research, Education and Service (UNM CARES) and chair of the New Mexico Association of Geriatric Education (NMAGE). He was president of the American Society of Aging (1984-1986) and a member of its Executive Committee (1982-88). Paul was a founding member of the American Bar Association Commission on Legal Problems of the Elderly, and was National Secretary of the Gray Panthers. He is Past Chair of the Board of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare and still serves on the Board of Directors.  He also serves on the Board of Directors of the New Mexico Legal Aid Society and KNME, New Mexico’s public television station. Since 1972, he has received and administered several million dollars in grants and awards primarily in the field of legal services for the elderly.  He has also been involved in the field of social marketing and has special interest in video production as a means of community organization.  He has won numerous awards, including regional Emmys, for this work.

Katharine Bau Hsiao, Directing Attorney

Katharine Bau Hsiao co-directs NSCLC’s Oakland Office and is working on long term care and Medicare Part D issues.  Katharine is a co-author of the Baby Boomer’s Guide to Nursing Home Care (Taylor Trade, August, 2006), and Medicare Part D: State and Local Efforts to Assist Vulnerable Beneficiaries (Commonwealth Fund, May, 2008) and numerous other guides to assist advocates in navigating low income health programs for seniors.  Prior to coming to NSCLC in 2005, Katharine served as a Managing Attorney at Legal Assistance for Seniors in Oakland, California for ten years.  She was a key co-founder of the Alameda County Legal Language Project which provides trained interpreters and translators to legal services providers, and has led local, regional and national trainings on Cultural Competency, Language Access, and a variety of substantive elder law areas.  Katharine has also served as Interim Director of the Legal Aid Association of California, as Assistant Director of Career Planning for Minorities and Public Interest/Public Service at Boalt Hall School of Law, and as a private practice elder law attorney.  Katharine is a magna cum laude graduate of Yale University and a member of Phi Beta Kappa (1982); she has a J.D. from Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California at Berkeley (1988) and an M.Div. from the American Baptist Seminary of the West (2000).

Georgia Burke, Directing Attorney

Georgia Burke co-directs NSCLC’s Oakland Office.  She joined NSCLC in 2005, where she has worked primarily on issues related to Medicare Part D affecting low-income beneficiaries, including dual eligibles, and limited-English proficient (LEP) beneficiaries.  Georgia spearheads NSCLC’s extensive administrative Medicare advocacy with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and has drafted and coordinated joint comments among state and national advocacy organizations that led to significant improvements in agency guidance and consumer communications for dual eligibles and LEP beneficiaries.  She plays a key role in NSCLC’s legislative advocacy, and recently drafted Medicare language access provisions that were included in the Children’s Health and Medicare Protection (CHAMP) bill that passed the House of Representatives in August, 2007.  Georgia has also submitted testimony at Congressional hearings on Part D and lobbied extensively for changes in the Medicare Part D statute.  She is a leading national expert on Medicare Part D appeal rights.  Georgia’s work at NSCLC follows almost 20 years in private practice in Washington, D.C. and Oakland devoted to administrative and legislative advocacy.  While in private practice in Oakland, she was a volunteer attorney with the Bar Association of San Francisco’s Volunteer Legal Services Program, handling SSI disability appeals.  Georgia is a magna cum laude graduate of Georgetown University Law Center (1983), where she was an editor of Law and Policy in International Business. She has a B.A. with senior honors from Manhattanville College and was a National Defense Foreign Language Fellow at the University of Southern California.

Eric Carlson, Directing Attorney

Eric Carlson has specialized in long-term care since 1990, and is one of the nation’s leading consumer experts on nursing homes and assisted living facilities. He counsels attorneys from across the country in issues relating to long-term care, and also participates in litigation on residents’ behalf. He is the author of numerous publications and articles, including Long Term Care Advocacy (LexisNexis), the leading legal treatise on long-term care issues. His consumer publications include 20 Common Nursing Home Problems, and How to Resolve Them and (with co-author and fellow NSCLC attorney Katharine Bau Hsiao) The Baby Boomer’s Guide to Nursing Home Care (Taylor Trade).

Mr. Carlson speaks frequently on long-term care topics to attorneys, social workers, consumers, and others.  Recent presentations have taken him to Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, Missouri, Ohio, Oregon, Virginia, Texas, and other states.

Mr. Carlson is a summa cum laude graduate of the University of Minnesota, and received his legal education from the Boalt Hall School of Law of the University of California at Berkeley. Following law school he served as a law clerk for a federal judge, worked in a fellowship in public interest law, and then served as Director of the Nursing Home Advocacy Project of Bet Tzedek Legal Services of Los Angeles.

Gerald McIntyre, Directing Attorney

Gerald McIntyre has more than 30 years of experience in legal services advocacy. He has worked as a staff attorney at Bronx Legal Services; as Executive Director of Southern Tier Legal Services in Bath, NY; and as a lecturer and staff attorney at Cornell Law School. He joined the staff of NSCLC in 1993, and has since provided support and co-counseling to countless legal services and other elder law attorneys on Social Security and SSI issues. Prior to his law career, Jerry was a Peace Corps volunteer in Guatemala. Jerry graduated from the State University of New York and received his law degree from Yale Law School.

Rochelle Bobroff, Director, Federal Rights Project

Rochelle worked with AARP Foundation Litigation from 1999 until recently. Rochelle’s very first legal job was working as a law clerk for the founder of NSCLC's Federal Rights Project, Herb Semmel, at New York Lawyers for the Public Interest. Before working at AARP, Rochelle was a staff attorney for the Maryland Legal Aid Bureau, addressing Medicaid, SSI and other federal benefits issues. Practically all of her career since then has been devoted to public interest and high-level federal rights issues. After graduating Phi Beta Kappa with a B.A. in Economics at the University of Chicago, Rochelle graduated from Yale Law School in 1987. While at law school, Rochelle was a finalist in the Yale Law School moot court competition and published a Comment on subject matter jurisdiction in Social Security cases in the Yale Law and Policy Review.

Gene Coffey, Attorney

Gene Coffey is a staff attorney at the National Senior Citizens Law Center in Washington, D.C., and has been providing legal representation to Medicaid beneficiaries since 1997.  Gene started out at Legal Services of Northern Virginia, where he primarily focused on assisting clients attain Medicaid eligibility for long-term care.  Since joining NSCLC in 2002, Gene has exclusively focused on Medicaid developments at the state and federal level.  He has brought federal court actions on behalf of Medicaid beneficiaries in Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and Oregon.  The Kentucky lawsuit, Kerr v. Holsinger, 2004 WL 882203 (E.D. Ky.), resulted in the invalidation of the state’s harsh eligibility standard for long-term care services.  The Mississippi lawsuit, Vinson v. Barbour, et al., CA No. 3:04cv784WSu (S.D.Miss.), resulted in the restoration of Medicaid coverage for 50,000 aged and disabled Mississippi residents.  In addition to litigating, Gene has lectured on Medicaid at many conferences, including: AARP’s National Aging and Law Conference; the National Health Law Program’s Advocates Conference; the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys Symposium; the National Citizens Coalition for Nursing Home Reform’s Annual Conference; the National Legal Aid and Defender Substantive Law Conference; the Virginia Annual Statewide Legal Aid Conference; and the New York Bar Association’s Legal Assistance Partnership Conference.  Gene is a graduate of Manhattan College and Vermont Law School.  He is admitted to practice in Virginia and the District of Columbia. 

Simon Lazarus, Public Policy Counsel

Si is responsible for the Washington DC advocacy effort of the Herbert Semmel Federal Rights Project. Si has served as Associate Director of President Jimmy Carter’s White House Domestic Policy Staff (1977-81), as a partner in Powell, Goldstein, Frazer, and Murphy LLP (1981-2002), and as Senior Counsel to Sidley Austin Brown & Wood LLP (2002- ). He is a Trustee of the Center for Law and Social Policy, and writes frequently on issues of law and policy. His articles on federal rights have appeared in the Atlantic, the Washington Post Outlook (Sunday opinion) Section, the Democratic Leadership Council’s magazine Blueprint, and The American Prospect. His Atlantic Monthly article, “The Most Dangerous Branch?”, has been republished in two anthologies, The Best American Political Writing 2003 Royce Flippin, ed. (Avalon Press 2003), and Principles and Practice of American Politics: Classic and Contemporary Readings, 2d ed., Samuel Kernell and Steven S. Smith, eds. (CQ Press 2003). He graduated from Yale Law School, where he was Note & Comment Editor of the Yale Law Journal.

Anna Rich, Staff Attorney

Anna Rich is a staff attorney with NSCLC's Oakland Office.  She provides advocacy and support on behalf of dually eligible individuals receiving Medicare prescription drug coverage, and also participates in litigation on behalf of low-income seniors.  Prior to joining NSCLC, she clerked for the Honorable Claudia Wilken, United States District Court for Northern California, and also worked for the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California.  Anna graduated from Swarthmore College in 1997 and from Yale Law School in 2003.  She is admitted to the California Bar. 

Kevin Prindiville, Staff Attorney

Kevin Prindiville is a Staff Attorney in the National Senior Citizens Law Center's Oakland office, where he works primarily on Medicare Part D issues. Kevin staffed a recent report, "Medicare Part D Plans Fail Limited English Proficient Beneficiaries," and was the primary author of "LIS: Redetermination and Redeeming," "Advocate’s Guide to Solving Problems Under Part D," and "The Basics: Medicare Part D for Low Income Advocates in California." Prior to joining NSCLC, Kevin worked as a staff attorney at the Pennsylvania Health Law Project in Philadelphia where he represented low-income individuals having trouble obtaining health care. While at PHLP, he worked primarily on issues affecting Medicaid recipients, the uninsured and individuals with mental health disabilities. Kevin is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Law School and the University of California, San Diego.

Harper Jean Tobin, Staff Attorney

Harper Jean Tobin recently received degrees in law and social work from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. She is the author of Against the Surgical Requirement for Change of Legal Sex, 38 Case W. Res. J. Int’l L. 393 (2007), and the forthcoming Confronting Misinformation on Abortion: Informed Consent, Deference, and Fetal Pain, 17 Colum. J. Gender & L. __ (2008). Her experiences as a legal intern included legislative work for the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force; domestic violence work for the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland; research for potential and ongoing litigation, as well as client intake, for Lambda Legal; and, most recently, regulatory research for the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network.