Bertha Coombs is a veteran journalist who served as the Senior Health Care Reporter at CNBC, where she worked for more than 20 years. She focused on health care services including health insurers, pharmacy benefit managers and pharmacies, interviewing a number of Fortune 500 health care CEOs and government health agency leaders.

In the course of her reporting, Bertha conducted one-on-one on-air interviews with former UnitedHealth CEO Andrew Witty, Cigna’s David Cordani, CVS Health’s current and former CEOs, Centene’s Sarah London, Oscar Health’s Marc Bertolini and Eli Lilly’s David Ricks, as well as Cost Plus founder Mark Cuban, among others.

Bertha also covered health care policy initiatives, ranging from the launch of the Affordable Care Act during the Obama Administration, the inauguration of Medicare drug price negotiations under the Biden Administration, to the Trump Administration’s Most Favored Nation drug pricing agreements. She has interviewed the leaders of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid from the last four Presidential Administrations, as well as Food and Drug Administration Commissioners.

An experienced moderator, Bertha has led sessions at conferences including Aspen Ideas Health, The Milken Institute Future of Health Summit, HLTH and The Clinton Global Initiative.

Since leaving CNBC, Bertha now serves on the advisory board of the National Hispanic Health Research Institute. (NHHRI), and will be emceeing and moderating at the organization’s inaugural health conference this fall.

In 2026, she has moderated sessions at PhRMA with former FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, and health leaders focused on AI at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute Health Dialogue conference. She will be moderating a discussion with CMS leaders at Aspen Health in June. In August, she will be moderating the Black Doctors Conference in Martha’s Vineyard, and a maternal health conference with the Hispanic Health Council in Hartford in September.

Bertha was born in Havana, Cuba, and speaks mostly fluent Spanish. Her family emigrated to Boston when she was a child. She is a graduate of Yale University and began her career with the Leo Beranek Reporting Fellowship at WCVB-TV in Boston.