Cybele Bjorklund

Cybele Bjorklund is the staff director for the Health Subcommittee on the Committee on Ways and Means in the United States House of Representatives. Led by Chairman Charles B. Rangel (D-NY) and Health Subcommittee Chairman Pete Stark (D-CA), the Committee’s health portfolio includes Medicare, private health insurance, and health issues in the Internal Revenue Code. She has been the senior health care advisor to Democratic members on the Committee since 2001. Prior to this position, she spent nearly four years as Senator Edward Kennedy’s (D-MA) deputy staff director for health policy on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee in the United States Senate. From 1995-1997, she worked as a legislative aide on health and veterans’ issues for Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD). Before moving to Congress, Bjorklund was a Medicare and insurance policy analyst at the Health Care Financing Administration (now the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services). Bjorklund received a master’s degree from the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Hygiene and Public Health, with an emphasis on health policy and a concentration in law, ethics and policy, and a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the School of Journalism at the University of Oregon. She is a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance, serves on the advisory committees of the National Health Policy Forum and the Center for Studying Health System Change, and is on the board of directors for the David A. Winston Health Policy Fellowship program.