Economics of Health Care and Policy

Catalog description

This course applies basic economic concepts to analyze the health care market and evaluate health policies. The course begins with a discussion of productivity in health care and of the theoretical and empirical effects of asymmetric information and market failure. The second part of the course explores several topic areas in the health care economics literature: health insurance and the labor market; health policy interventions; and health as human capital. The third part of the course examines competition and the behavior of health care providers, with emphasis on the impact of policy on competition, behavior, and finally, bringing us full circle, health care productivity.