Tamara Hayford
Tamara Hayford, PhD, is a Policy Fellow at the 九色社区 Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR). She is the chief of the Health Policy Studies Unit in the Health Analysis Division of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). In that role, she oversees reports and policy analysis on topic areas including prescription drugs, the opioid crisis, mental health, and other public health issues. She works to meet the needs of congressional staff to understand the budgetary and economic effects of legislation under consideration.
During her 14-year tenure at CBO, Hayford has researched and analyzed a wide variety of health policy issues. She has worked extensively in the prescription drug area, analyzing pricing and spending patterns in the Medicare Part D program. She has guided a team of researchers analyzing the impacts of proposed legislation and regulatory changes for prescription drug pricing on the federal budget and the long-term pipeline for pharmaceutical innovation, most recently including the 2022 Reconciliation Act. Hayford collaborated with a team of researchers to project the implications of transitioning the U.S. healthcare system to a single-payer health care. In addition, she has worked on a variety of other health care topics at the CBO, such as spending patterns and access to care for people who are dually enrolled in Medicare and Medicaid, provider responses to changes in payment rates and demand for services, Medicare Advantage and risk adjustment, hospital profitability, and quality measurement initiatives in the Medicare program. In addition to CBO publications, Hayford鈥檚 work has been published in journals including Health Affairs, Health Services Research, and the Journal for Policy Analysis and Management and presented at conferences including annual research meetings for Academy Health, the American Society of Health Economists, and the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.
Hayford holds a bachelor鈥檚 degree from the College of William and Mary and a PhD from the University of Maryland.