Maria Alejandra Benítez

Alejandra Benítez is a PhD student at The Wharton School’s Department of Health Care Management and Economics. Between 2018 and 2020, Benítez worked as RA in the health area at Centro de Estudios Públicos (CEP). At CEP, Benítez studied the health insurance, providers, and pharmaceutical sectors, and published several articles on topics such as out-of-pocket health expenditure of households and the access disparities to health services in Chile. With CEP’s health team, she led an experts’ committee to elaborate a proposal to reform the public health insurer of Chile. Between November 2020 and June 2021, she worked as an advisor of the Head of Social Policies of the Ministry of Finance in her country, contributing to the design of policies related to topics such as health, education, and housing. Benítez is interested in studying the industrial organization and regulation of the health system, with the goal of finding and understanding the barriers to access to health services and contribute with high-level evidence to their reduction through well-designed public policies. She received her MA in Economics at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.