He has served on Institute of Medicine panels on public accountability for health insurers under Medicare and on improving the financing of vaccines.
[7] In 2005, he and Philip A. Rea co-founded the Roy and Diana Vagelos Program in Life Sciences and Management[8] and continues to serve as Emeritus Faculty Co-Director.
He is considered to be one of the key architects of the individual mandate, which he and a team of economists proposed to George H. W. Bush in the late 1980s.
[10] His classic study on the economics of moral hazard was the first to point out how health insurance coverage may affect patients' use of medical services.
His interests in health policy deal with ways to reduce the number of uninsured through tax credits for public and private insurance and the appropriate design for Medicare in a budget-constrained environment.