Thomas Buchmueller

Senior Associate Dean for Faculty & Research

Waldo O. Hildebrand Professor of Risk Management and Insurance

Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy

Tom Buchmueller 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.

Professor Buchmueller also holds an appointment in Department of Health Management and Policy in the School of Public Health. He is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and was an elected member of the Board of Directors of the American Society of Health Economists and from 2018 to 2023 he was Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Health Economics. From 2011 to 2012, he served as the Senior Health Economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers and from 2023 to 2025 he was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

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 Fellow at the Brookings Institution (2025), Visiting Scholar at USC’s Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics (2019-2020), Professeur Invité at the University of Bordeaux (2015-16), 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 (2001-02).

Marissa Bhuva

Graduate Advisor, Full-Time MBA Program Office