Victor R. Fuchs

Who is Victor R. Fuchs?

Victor R. Fuchs is an American health economist. He has been called "the dean of health economists" by New York Times economics columnist David Leonhardt. He is the Henry J. Kaiser, Jr. Professor at Stanford University, emeritus. Since 1962, he has been a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and is the co-director of the FRESH-Thinking Project, CASBS, at Stanford University. In 1995 he served as president of the American Economic Association.

A Comparison Between the United States and Canada

Also, Fuchs published a paper with James S. Hahn in the New England Journal of Medicine entitled “How Does Canada Do it?- A comparison of Expenditures for Physicians’ Services in the United States and Canada”. This paper discusses the differences in the Canadian and US healthcare spending patterns and also discusses why healthcare expenditures are so much higher in the United States. They found that the higher US expenditures were entirely based on higher fees for services, at 234% higher than Canada, even though there are more physicians per capita in Canada. This proves that the typical view of Canada saving money by delivering fewer services is false, and that the insurance setup, being a single-payer system, is what gives them the edge.