Linda Blumberg, Ph.D.

Linda J. Blumberg, Ph.D. is a research professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy, and Institute Fellow at the Urban Institute. She is an expert on private health insurance (employer and nongroup), health care financing, and health system reform. Her recent work includes a variety of projects related to analysis of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), strategies to address remaining coverage issues, efforts to repeal/replace the ACA, and the provision of technical assistance to states in their efforts to analyze and implement federal reforms. Examples are: analyses of health care reform options from incremental to single payer; analyses of public option and capped provider payment rate proposals; state by state analyses of the implications of previous House and Senate repeal/replace bills; delineation of strategies to fix problems associated with the ACA; an array of studies on the nature of nongroup Marketplace insurer competition; analyses of the implications of the King v. Burwell and House v. Burwell Supreme Court cases; and a large multiyear quantitative and qualitative analytic effort monitoring and evaluating the effects of the ACA. She has analyzed approaches for setting standards of affordability for insurance coverage, and led the quantitative estimates for a study laying the foundation for building a roadmap to universal coverage in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Dr. Blumberg is frequently consulted by members of Congress and their staffs as well as by major media outlets on issues related to insurance and health care reform.

From August 1993 through October 1994 she served as health policy advisor to the Clinton Administration during its initial health care reform effort.  First at the Department of Health and Human Services and then at the Office of Management and Budget, she was a coordinator of the quantitative modeling effort through the final stages of development of the Health Security Act, and then through the development of alternative policies with Congress. She worked proactively with White House officials, members of Congress and their staff.

Dr. Blumberg received her Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan.