Penn Medicine Magazine

It was the mid-1960s when the health insurance magnate Leonard Davis picked up the phone and dialed the Wharton school. Davis and his wife, Sophie, had founded the Philadelphia-based Colonial Penn Group in 1963 to sell health insurance to people over 65. When he reached Wharton’s dean, Davis said he was prepared to make a six-figure gift to the school to establish an institute focused on health economics. And then, as the story goes, the dean replied, “What’s that?”