Miriam Laugesen, PhD

Miriam Laugesen, PhD, is an Associate Professor (with tenure) and Faculty Lead for the Certificates in Health Policy Analysis and Health Policy and Practice in the Department of Health Policy and Management (HPM) at the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University. She teaches courses in health policy and political analysis, the integration of public health science and practice, policy advocacy, and personal leadership in public health. From 2023 to 2024, Laugesen was a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow at the National Academy of Medicine. During this time, she served as a Legislative Fellow in the office of Senator Elizabeth Warren, contributing to Senator Warren’s private equity legislation, congressional oversight of private equity investors, and Medicare payment policy.

Laugesen is an expert in physician reimbursement, primary care, and private investment in healthcare. She has authored 75 publications, including 50 peer-reviewed papers in leading journals, as well as two books. Her book, Fixing Medical Prices: How Physicians Are Paid (Harvard University Press, 2016), examines the role of a committee of medical organizations that advises Medicare on physician services. The book was foundational in shaping the National Academy of Medicine’s primary care recommendations in 2021 and 2025, and influenced the bipartisan "Pay PCPs Act," introduced in the U.S. Senate in 2024, which proposed changes to Medicare’s advisory structure.

Laugesen's previous research, conducted with Sherry Glied, found that prices for hip replacements and office visits in the U.S. exhibited greater price differentials compared to other countries. Surprisingly, however, U.S. primary care fees showed less deviation from international prices. While prior research had argued that higher U.S. prices led to higher expenditure, this study used novel data sources to create granular cross-national price comparisons. Rather than showing uniformity in U.S. prices, it demonstrated variation within service types. This prompted renewed conversations about the relationship between U.S. expenditure and U.S. prices, as well as primary care fees.

Laugesen’s first book, Democratic Governance and Health (Otago University Press, 2012), coauthored with Robin Gauld, explores the historical and contemporary development of locally elected hospital boards in New Zealand. She is currently coauthoring a book on reimbursement practices in France, Germany, and Japan.

Her work has been featured in media outlets globally, including radio and television interviews on Marketplace, WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show, and Al Jazeera. It has also been covered in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Politico, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Washington Monthly, STAT News, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Los Angeles Times, Toronto Star, The Guardian (London), The Independent (London), and Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Zurich).

In 2023, Laugesen was named a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Hitachi Fellow to Japan. She is a past Columbia University Provost Leadership Fellow, awarded to Columbia’s outstanding mid-career and senior faculty members; a Tow Faculty Scholar, for outstanding and innovative research and thought leadership by mid-career faculty; a former Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator Awardee; and a former Fulbright Scholar.

Laugesen has served on expert panels on national government and nonprofit initiatives related to physician payment and currently serves on the National Academy of Medicine Workgroup on Private Investment in Healthcare. She has previously served as President of the American Political Science Association’s Health Politics and Policy Section, as a member of Academy Health’s Education Council, and was Book Review Editor for the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law.

Laugesen earned her PhD in Political Science from the University of Melbourne and was a Special Student in Harvard University’s Health Policy PhD Program. She completed postdoctoral training in health services research at RAND–UCLA. She holds a BA (Hons) (First Class) in Politics and Public Administration from Victoria University of Wellington and an MA in Political Science from Washington University in St. Louis.