Gerald Kominski, PhD, senior fellow at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, is the principal investigator of CalSIM, a professor emeritus of health policy and management at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and a professor emeritus of public policy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. He was Center director from 2012-2018 and associate director from 1994-2012.
 
Kominski's research interests focus on evaluating the costs and cost-effectiveness of health care programs and technologies, with a special emphasis on public insurance programs, including Medicare, Medicaid, and Workers' Compensation; improving access and health outcomes among ethnic and vulnerable populations; and, developing microsimulation models for forecasting eligibility, enrollment and expenditures under health reform. He led the team at UCLA that developed the UCLA/UC Berkeley CalSIM microsimulation model use for estimating the impacts of health reform in California.
 
From 2003-2009, Kominski served as vice chair for the Cost Impact Analysis Team of the California Health Benefits Review Program(CHBRP), which conducts legislative analyses for the California legislature of proposals to expand mandated insurance benefits. From 2001-2008, he was associate dean for academic programs at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.
 
Kominski received his PhD in public policy analysis from the University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School in 1985, and his AB from the University of Chicago in 1978. Prior to joining the faculty at UCLA in 1989, he served for three and a half years as a staff member of the agency now known as the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC). He is co-author of over 215 articles and reports, and edited the widely used textbook, Changing the U.S. Health Care System: Key Issues in Health Services Policy and Management, which was published in its fourth edition in 2014.