Christine Buttorff

Christine Buttorff (she/her) is a policy researcher at the RAND Corporation. Her primary research interests are in health insurance benefit design and prescription drug policy. She uses both qualitative and quantitative methods for the evaluation of policy interventions.

Buttorff has worked on projects assessing specialty drug coverage, opioids in workers' compensation, Medicare payment innovations, and insurance benefit design topics. She is currently working on two evaluations for the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI): the Medicare Advantage Value-Based Insurance Design model test and the Part D Senior Savings model. Additionally, she provides technical assistance to CMS for the new Medicare Ground Ambulance Data Collection System. Outside of work on Medicare-related topics, she recently completed an evaluation of how cannabis legalization in Colorado affected prescription opioid use. 

Prior to completing her dissertation, Buttorff was a reporter for a member station of National Public Radio in Nashville, where she covered government and politics, as well as health care policy at the state and local levels. She was also a dancer with Nashville Ballet during this time. She received her Ph.D. in health economics from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the department of Health Policy and Management and her B.S. in political science and B.A. in Italian studies from Santa Clara University.