Jessica Banthin, PhD

Jessica Banthin is a Senior Fellow at the Urban Institute, where she studies the effects of health insurance reform policies on coverage and costs. Before joining the Urban Institute, she served more than 25 years in the federal government, most recently as deputy director for health at the Congressional Budget Office. During her eight-year term at the Congressional Budget Office, Banthin directed the production of numerous major cost estimates of legislative proposals to modify the Affordable Care Act. She has contributed to Congressional Budget Office reports and written about how reform proposals affect individuals’ and families’ incentives to enroll in coverage, influence employers’ decisions to offer coverage to their employees, and affect insurance market competitiveness.

In her recent work, Banthin has written on competition in insurer markets and the impact of the COVID-19 recession on health insurance coverage.  Banthin has also conducted significant work on the financial burden of health care premiums and out-of-pocket costs on families. Prior to her stint at CBO, she was the director of a research group at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. She earned her PhD in economics from the University of Maryland, College Park, and her AB from Harvard University.