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Addressing the challenge of covering heath care expenses—while minimizing economic risks. Moral hazard—the tendency to change behavior when the cost of that behavior will be borne by others—is a particularly tricky question when considering health care. Kenneth J. Arrow’s seminal 1963 paper on this topic (included in this volume) was one of the first to explore the implication of moral hazard for health care, and Amy Finkelstein—recognized as one of the world’s foremost experts on the topic—here examines this issue in the context of contemporary American health care policy. Drawing on research from both the original RAND Health Insurance Experiment and her own research, includi...
Why does US health care have such high costs and poor outcomes? Dr. David S. Guzick offers this critique of the American health care industry and argues that it could work more effectively by rebalancing care, cost, and access. For decades, the United States has been faced with a puzzling problem: Despite spending much more money per capita on health care than any other developed nation, its population suffers from notoriously poorer health. In comparison with 10 other high-income nations, in fact, the US has the lowest life expectancy at birth, the highest rates of infant and neonatal mortality, and the most inequitable access to physicians when adjusted for need. In An Introduction to the ...
The global financial crisis of recent years and the associated large fiscal deficits and debt levels that have impacted many countries underscores the importance of reliable and timely government statistics and, more broadly, public sector debt as a critical element in countries fiscal and external sustainability. Public Sector Debt Statistics is the first international guide of its kind, and its primary objectives are to improve the quality and timeliness of key debt statistics and promote a convergence of recording practices to foster international comparability and as a reference for national compilers and users for compiling and disseminating these data. Like other statistical guides pub...
Folland, Goodman, and Stano’s bestselling The Economics of Health and Health Care text offers the market-leading overview of all aspects of Health Economics, teaching through core economic themes, rather than concepts unique to the health care economy. The Eighth Edition of this key textbook has been revised and updated throughout, and reflects changes since the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). In addition to its revised treatment of health insurance, the text also introduces the key literature on social capital as it applies to individual and public health, as well as looking at public health initiatives relating to population health and economic equity, and comparing nume...
In 1948 Americans spent five percent of total consumption on health care. Six decades later (2009) this had risen to twenty-one percent. What happened? Why did the percentage continue to grow? And given current factors and trajectories, this probably will continue in the foreseeable future. The problem is that a larger health care percentage results in a smaller percentage of other valued consumption: housing, food, education, transportation, and so on. Finally, add health care's bureaucratic burden. Often getting health care seems more like an Inquisition than purchasing products and services from friendly merchants and medical providers. Addressing these concerns, this study examines the p...
An ideal entry point into health economics for everyone from aspiring economists to healthcare professionals. The economics of healthcare are messy. For most consumers, there’s little control over costs or services. Sometimes doctors are paid a lot; other times they aren’t paid at all. Insurance and drug companies are evil, except when they’re not. If economics is the study of market efficiency, how do we make sense of this? Better Health Economics is a warts-and-all introduction to a field that is more exceptions than rules. Economists Tal Gross and Matthew J. Notowidigdo offer readers an accessible primer on the field’s essential concepts, a review of the latest research, and a framework for thinking about this increasingly imperfect market. A love letter to a traditionally unlovable topic, Better Health Economics provides an ideal entry point for students in social science, business, public policy, and healthcare. It’s a reminder that healthcare may be a failed market—but it’s our failed market.
Flatlined lifts the veil of secrecy on twenty-first century health care and delves into the realities of good people caught in a bad medical system. Dr. Guy L. Clifton, a practitioner as well as a policy advocate, reveals first-hand accounts of needless tragedy, such as the young man who died after a car wreck for lack of a bed in a qualified hospital and the surgeon who was dejected by the scarcity of resources needed to enable him to perform heart surgery on an uninsured man. Arguing that a lack of coordinated care and quality medical practice benchmarks result in high levels of redundancy and ineffectiveness, Clifton proposes that the key to reducing health care costs, improving quality, ...
In this long-awaited updated edition of his groundbreaking work Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis, renowned healthcare economist John Goodman ("father" of Health Savings Accounts) analyzes America's ongoing healthcare fiasco—including, for this edition, the failed promises of Obamacare. Goodman then provides what many critics of our healthcare system neglect: solutions. And not a moment too soon. Americans are entangled in a system with perverse incentives that raise costs, reduce quality, and make care less accessible. It's not just patients that need liberation from this labyrinth of confusion—it's doctors, businessmen, and institutions as well. Read this new work and discover: w...
"This book holds that the demand for insurance is best understood, not by focusing on risk preferences, but by focusing on the additional income, the states of the world that trigger the income transfer from the insurer, and the value of income (and consumption) in those states. It is unlikely that demand can be understood if the analyst limits the gain from insurance to coverage of the uninsured loss alone. It is also unlikely that the demand can be understood if the analyst limits the analysis to a movement along a static "risk averse" utility or value function, rather than acknowledging that a shift of this function, and thus in the utility or value of additional income, often coincides with the occurrence of the event that triggers the payout"--
The Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution was established to foster policy innovation from leading economic thinkers—ideas based on evidence and experience, not ideology and doctrine. The overall goal is to promote America's long-term economic growth, and economic security for American families. This important book brings The Hamilton Project's approach to one of the most critical issues facing Americans today—health care. In Who Has the Cure? a team of noted economists and policy analysts emphasizes the importance of universal health care—not just its value to individual and families, but also the overall economy. They examine in detail four policy alternatives for achieving universal health insurance coverage that would also improve efficiency in the health care industry. The contributors to this volume also evaluate proposales designed to make health care more affordable and effective. Among the possible strategies studied here are an expansion of preventive care, income-related cost sharing, and reform of Medicare's prescription drug benefit.