Health Economics

Catalog description

This course surveys health economics through its principles, insurance, physicians, hospitals and related care, and regulation and integration. Dynamic lectures cover the role of economics in health; differences between health economics and other branches of the discipline; supply, demand, and equilibrium; and the iron triangle of health care (access, cost, and quality). Key health insurance concepts are introduced—risk aversion, moral hazard, cost sharing, and adverse selection—along with a practical overview of the calculations that underlie pricing decisions. You will learn about the relationship between physicians and patients, supplier-induced demand, alternative payment models, the economics of primary care and of specialization, and the role of nonprofit and for-profit hospitals in the health care system. The course concludes with the legal and regulatory structures that govern hospital systems and hospitals’ regional market power, by examining vertical and horizontal integration, price discrimination, price fixing, mergers, and antitrust laws. In the final assignment, you will apply course concepts to health equity issues.