My work focuses largely on monitoring and evaluating the effects of the implementation of health care reform, nationally and at the state level. I am acutely interested in identifying the policy decisions and other factors that affect the ability of the reforms to meet their goals. Changes to private health insurance and insurance markets, along with their interactions with public programs, are my primary focus.
Linda Blumberg is a senior fellow in the Health Policy Center at the Urban Institute, having joined in 1992. She is an expert on private health insurance (employer and nongroup), health care financing, and health system reform. Her recent work includes extensive research related to the Affordable Care Act (ACA); in particular, providing technical assistance to states, tracking policy decisionmaking and implementation efforts at the state level, and interpreting and analyzing the implications of particular policies. She codirects a large, multiyear project using qualitative and quantitative methods to monitor and evaluate ACA implementation in select states and nationally. Examples of other research include codirecting 22 state case studies of stakeholder perspectives on ACA implementation, assessing the implications of self-insurance among small employers on insurance reforms, and comparing the importance of employer and individual mandates in reaching ACA objectives. She also led the quantitative analysis supporting the development of a “Roadmap to Universal Coverage” in Massachusetts, a project with her Urban colleagues that informed the 2006 comprehensive reforms in that state.
Blumberg is frequently asked to testify before Congress and is quoted in major media outlets on health reform topics. She serves on the Cancer Policy Institute’s Advisory Board and has served on the Health Affairs editorial board. From 1993 through 1994 she was a health policy advisor to the Clinton administration during its health care reform effort, and she was a 1996 Ian Axford Fellow in Public Policy.
She received her PhD in economics from the University of Michigan.
