Economics of Health Care

Catalog description

This is a course in the application of microeconomic principles to health behaviors, such as exercising, smoking, and eating (or overeating), as well as to the markets for health care and health insurance. We first focus on consumer behavior and demand for medical services. An important framework in this part of the course is that health can be treated as a capital good that individuals invest in based on the cost of benefits. The second part of the course deals with the health insurance market and the role that health insurance, private as well as public, plays in determining the demand for health and heath care. We will study health insurance both from the consumer's perspective and the firm's perspective.