Former Staff
Leighton Ku
Areas of Expertise: Health
Ku was a Senior Fellow in health policy with the Center from 1999 through January 2008. He specialized in Medicaid and SCHIP, and other health policy issues.
He worked on federal and state health policy issues, and helped to explain health research issues including trends in insurance coverage, health care for immigrants, and the way federal and state budget concerns impact health care.
He was a regular panelist on the health policy talk radio show on WMAL, and has been quoted by many other media outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and CNN.
Ku is an adjunct professor in public policy at George Washington University.
Before coming to the Center, he was a principal researcher at the Urban Institute, where he authored and directed studies on how welfare reform affected Medicaid, health care coverage and access for immigrants.
Ku has a PhD in health policy from Boston University and an MPH from UC Berkeley.
Recent Reports
- “Crowd-Out” Is Not the Same as Voluntarily Dropping Private Health Insurance for Public Program Coverage
- Collateral Damage: Children Can Lose Coverage When Their Parents Lose Health Insurance
- New Research Shows Simplifying Medicaid Can Reduce Children’s Hospitalizations
- Comparing Public and Private Health Insurance for Children
- Reducing Disparities in Health Coverage for Legal Immigrant Children and Pregnant Women
