National Bureau of Economic Research
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-8715

vfuchs@stanford.edu
(650) 326-7639 (voice)
(650) 328-4163 (fax)

Expertise
providing universal healthcare coverage while containing costs; healthcare costs and medical expenditures; determinants of health, especially medical innovations, socioeconomic factors and individual behaviors

Victor Fuchs is the Henry J. Kaiser, Jr., Professor of Economics and of Health Research and Policy, emeritus; an FSI senior fellow; and a core faculty member at CHP/PCOR. He has written extensively on the cost of medical care and on determinants of health, with an emphasis on the role of socioeconomic factors and physician behavior. His current research focuses on health care reform, income inequality, and the economics of aging.

He is developing a proposal for a "universal healthcare voucher" system in which all families or individuals would be given a voucher -- financed by an earmarked value-added tax -- that would guarantee them coverage in a private health insurance plan with a standardized package of benefits, including basic health services and catastrophic coverage.

Fuchs is a member of the Institute of Medicine and was president (1995) and distinguished fellow (1990) of the American Economic Association. He received the Distinguished Investigator Award (1988) and the Distinguished Fellow Award (1996) from the Association for Health Services Research, and was awarded the Baxter Foundation's Health Services Research Prize (1991). He received a BS in business administration from New York University, and an MA and PhD in economics from Columbia University.