Tom Buchmueller is a visiting fellow at the Center on Health Policy at Brookings. He is a health economist who is an expert on the economics of health insurance and related public policies. He has done extensive research on the link between health insurance and the labor market in the U.S., consumer demand for health insurance, the interaction between public policies and private insurance markets, and health care reform. In addition to his research on U.S. policy topics, he has published studies on the economics of health insurance in France, Australia, and the Netherlands. Much of his recent research focuses on health care reform in the U.S., with a particular emphasis on the effect of the Affordable Care Act’s insurance coverage expansions on patients and provider organizations.
Professor Buchmueller also holds an appointment in Department of Health Management and Policy in the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health and is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He was an elected member of the Board of Directors of the American Society of Health Economists and is a former editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Health Economics. In 2011-2012, he was the senior health economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers and from 2023 to 2025 he served in the Department of Health and Human Services as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (Office of Health Policy). Prior to joining the Ross School in 2006, Buchmueller was a professor at the University of California-Irvine’s Paul Merage School of Business. Other prior academic appointments include: visiting scholar, USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics (2019-2020), professeur invité at the University of Bordeaux (2015-2016), Packer Policy Fellow at the University of Technology Sydney’s Centre for Health Economic Research and Evaluation (2006-2007), visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco (2005-2006), and visiting research scholar at INSEAD (2001-2002).
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Current Positions
- Waldo O. Hildebrand Professor of Risk Management and Insurance, University of Michigan, Ross School of Business
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Past Positions
- Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health Policy, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Policy and Evaluation, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
- Senior Health Economist, White House Council of Economic Advisers
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Education
- Ph.D. in Economics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, December 1992
- B.A. Cum Laude, Distinction in Economics, Carleton College, 1985