Miriam Laugesen, Ph.D.

Miriam Laugesen, PhD is an Associate Professor at Columbia University's Department of Health Policy and Management, where she teaches health policy and serves as faculty lead for over 100 students completing health policy certificates. She is the author of Fixing Medical Prices: How Physicians are Paid (Harvard University Press, 2016), which enlightened the US health policy community about the inner workings of Medicare reimbursement policies and pointed to the systemic causes of underinvestment in primary care in the United States. The book informed two National Academy of Medicine reports on primary and nursing, as well as reform proposals in the bipartisan bill "Pay PCPs Act" introduced in 2024. Past work on international physician fees (with Sherry Glied) framed national conversations on US primary and specialty care prices by revealing crossnational price differentials for hip replacements and office visits. Laugesen was awarded a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellowship at the National Academy of Medicine in 2023. She served as a Legislative Fellow in US Senator Elizabeth Warren's office, where she contributed to Senator Warren's legislative agenda, including a bill Senator Warren introduced in June 2024 (Corporate Crimes Against Health Care Act of 2024, S. 4503) as well as Senator Warren's oversight of private equity funds and Steward Health Care. Laugesen is a past recipient of a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellowship and former Visiting Scholar at the National Graduate School of Policy Studies in Tokyo. She was previously a Columbia University Provost Leadership Fellow, a Tow Faculty Scholar, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator Award recipient, and Fulbright Scholar. Laugesen has been active in service to the profession having served as Treasurer and past President of the American Political Science Association's Health Politics and Policy Section. She also served on AcademyHealth's Education Council and was the Book Review Editor for the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law.