Health Policy Center, independent research for better health policy: The Urban Institute

Linda J. Blumberg, Ph.D. is an economist and senior fellow at The Urban Institute. Her research has focused on private health insurance, health care financing, and health system reform. Her recent work includes a variety of projects related to analyzing components of health care reform at the federal and state levels. Some of these include: a large scale project to monitor and evaluate the effects of the Affordable Care Act; providing technical assistance to a number of states in planning their health insurance exchanges; analyses of the implications of reform for small employers and their workers; options for additional cost containment potential beyond those in the Affordable Care Act; analysis of the effects of reform on premiums for small group and non-group insurance; new provisions for selling coverage across state lines; issues related to multi-state health insurance exchanges; the potential roles of insurance exchanges under health care reform; analyses of the potential impact of a public plan option offered under reform; and analyses of the impact and role of individual mandates.

In 2006 Dr. Blumberg 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.  She has frequently been asked to testify before Congress on issues related to health insurance and health care reform, and she is a member of the Health Affairs editorial board.