Sih-Ting Cai, PhD

Biography

Sih-Ting Cai is a health economist and policy researcher who studies how payment policy, insurance coverage, market consolidation, and utilization shape access, spending, and outcomes for high-cost, high-need populations. Her research spans three areas: dialysis markets and Medicare Advantage; pharmaceutical pricing and innovation, including the adoption and cost impact of GLP-1 therapies; and care use, spending, and outcomes among individuals with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.

Cai earned her PhD in Health Services Research and Policy, with a focus on health economics, from the University of Pittsburgh, and her MPA from New York University. She joins USC Schaeffer following a postdoctoral fellowship at the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University Bloomington. Her GLP-1 research is supported by a Policy Research Grant from the National Institute for Health Care Management (NIHCM) Foundation, and her work has appeared in the Journal of Health Economics, Health Services Research, and the Journal of General Internal Medicine. Before turning to research, she worked for seven years as a registered nurse across the United States, Taiwan, and Australia.