Economics of Health and Health Care ((3))

Catalog description

This course examines the health care system from the perspective of several factors affecting the quality of life: health and wellness; happiness; poverty and human dignity; advancement of scientific knowledge and innovation; economic efficiency and cost effectiveness; security against catastrophic financial loss and infectious disease; freedom of choice and lifestyle/bounded rationality issues; and job creation. Topic coverage includes demand and supply of health care services; methods of financing health care expenditures; health care production; asymmetric information; demographic trends; medical insurance industry; government insurance programs; medical risk and liability; health care reform; and comparative health care systems. Significant focus on within- and between-country health care systems, how health care systems evolve over time, and how to reform health care systems as demographics and government finances change.