Linda J. Blumberg, Ph.D. is an economist and principal research associate at The Urban Institute. Her research has focused on private health insurance, health care financing, and health system reform. Recent work includes: development of health reform options in Massachusetts; comparing family financial burdens in obtaining children's health insurance under SCHIP versus health care tax proposals, development of standards of affordability for insurance; and developing options for expanding coverage to high cost/high risk individuals.

For most of 2006 she was in New Zealand as an Ian Axford Fellow in Public Policy, where she studied the effect of having private health insurance on the use of public health services there. She served as health policy advisor to the Clinton Administration during its health care reform effort.