Maanasa Kona

Maanasa Kona, JD, LLM, is an Associate Research Professor and faculty member at the Center on Health Insurance Reforms (CHIR) at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy. Her research focuses on improving the affordability of and access to health care, with particular emphasis on reducing the burden of medical debt, expanding access to primary and behavioral health care, and addressing the drivers of rising health care costs, including harmful provider consolidation.

She leads CHIR’s research on state and federal policies to address medical debt, developing nationally recognized resources that inform policymakers and support evidence-based reforms. Her work has been cited by media outlets and advocacy organizations and has helped shape the growing conversation around medical debt reform. In addition to this work, she has led projects focused on improving access to primary and mental health care, analyzing cost containment strategies in state employee health plans, and evaluating policy responses to provider consolidation.

She has also played a central role in research on state regulation of balance billing, enforcement of mental health parity laws, and the oversight of emerging alternative coverage arrangements in the private insurance market.

Her approach blends legal analysis, policy research, and system-level strategy to support equitable and actionable health reform. She is particularly interested in the frameworks, classifications, and implementation tools that make policy ideas usable by the people who put them into practice.

She received her Bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, her J.D. from American University Washington College of Law, and her LL.M. in Intellectual Property Law from The George Washington University. Prior to joining Georgetown, she was a Research Associate at the Department of Health Policy and Management at The George Washington University.