Economic Issues in Health Care ((4 Credits))

Catalog description

Healthcare economics uses the tools of microeconomic analysis to examine markets in the health sector including physician markets, hospital markets, pharmaceutical markets and health insurance markets. Students learn about managed care, and other types of health insurance, explore the effects of insurance on behavior, investigate reimbursement systems including new reimbursement models like value-based and bundled payments, and discuss factors that influence market outcomes in the healthcare sector including uncertainty, information asymmetries, and externalities. Current trends and issues facing the healthcare industry such as rising expenditures and new technologies are also investigated in this course. This course is aligned with the Community and Human Services guidelines for Knowledge of Service Delivery and Skills & Application. Prerequisites: Microeconomics ( ECON 2020 ), or significant experience in the health sector.