William C. Hsiao, PhD, FSA, the K.T. Li Professor of Economics at the Harvard School of Public Health, has been named the 2020 recipient of the William B. Graham Prize for Health Services Research. The Baxter International Foundation and the Association of University Programs in Health Administration (AUPHA) will present the Prize in a virtual format later this summer, at a date to be announced.
Hsiao’s health policy research program spans across less developed and advanced nations. His earlier, major contribution was developing a rational basis to set physician fees - the Resource-based Relative Value Scale (RBRVS). It was adopted by the US Medicare program and several Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nations as the basis for setting physician fees. Many hospitals in the USA and around the world, including China, currently set physicians’ bonuses for salaried doctors on this basis. Hsiao later developed an analytical model for national health systems, the Control Knob model, which is being taught and used worldwide. Eight nations commissioned Hsiao and his team to design major reforms of their national health systems. Hsiao used his model to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of those nations’ health systems, then recommend major reforms; four nations adopted his recommended reforms. The president of Taiwan awarded Hsiao the Presidential Brilliant Star Medal for his contribution.
Currently, Hsiao conducts research to improve health care financing and delivery in India and China. Recently, he turned his attention to the United States. The state of Vermont commissioned him to design a single-payer system. He also uses knowledge accumulated over decades on single-payer health systems and applies it to the analysis of Medicare for all proposals in the USA. A few months ago, California Governor Gavin Newsom appointed him as a member of the Governor’s Commission on Healthy Californians for All, whose task is to recommend viable reforms for the state of California.