Naomi Zewde, PhD MPH, is a fellow at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research (CHPR) and an assistant professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. She teaches health economics and policy analysis to MPH students and conducts research on policy designs to improve affordability and generosity of health insurance coverage and to reduce inequalities in income and wealth. Her work is published in peer-reviewed scientific outlets (including Health Services Research, Health Affairs, the Journal of Risk and Insurance), policy forums (the Roosevelt Institute, the Jain Family Institute), and the popular press (Ms. Magazine, the New York Times, PBS Newshour).
Prior to joining UCLA, Zewde was an assistant professor at the City University of New York’s Graduate School of Public Health and Policy. She is formerly a post-doctoral scientist at the Columbia School of Social Work at Columbia University.
Zewde has a doctoral degree in health policy, concentrating in economics, from Penn State University and an MPH and BA from Emory University.
Proposition 35 similarly carries a mixed bag of pros and cons, experts said.
The proposition seeks to make permanent an existing tax on managed care organizations such as Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield of California, which purchase insurance on behalf of those enrolled in Medi-Cal, [UCLA Center for Health Policy Research Fellow Naomi] Zewde said. The revenues from these taxes are used to offset the costs of Medi-Cal, but they also act as a benchmark for the federal government to determine how much funding it will provide to those managed care organizations, said Riti Shimkhada, a senior research scientist at the Center for Health Policy Research at UCLA.