Cathy A. Cowan is an American economist and social scientist. She earned her bachelor's degree from Indiana University in business and went on to attain a master's degree in business administration from the University of South Carolina. After completing her education, she worked in the 1990s as a program analyst for the Health Care Financing Administration, which later became the National Health Statistics Group at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Her research focuses on health care expenditure in the United States, comparing the trends of government, business and personal spending patterns. Besides issuing quarterly and annual reviews of the costs of health care, Cowan researches disparity of coverage and cost between US and international markets. She serves as chair