EC3353: Health Economics I
AY2014/2015, Semester 2, Lecturer: Liu Haoming
Course Coverage:
1. Tools in Health Economics
2. Demand & Supply of Health Care
3. Health Insurance
4. Asymmetric Information & Agency
5. Organisation of Health Insurance Market
6. The Physician's Practice
7. Equity, Efficiency & Need
This module introduces the economics of health and focus on the interaction between patients, physicians and health insurance providers.
The module opens with common tools of measurements in health economics, including regression analysis and cost-benefit analysis. Next, the factors of demand and supply of health care and its equilibrium is studied using standard microeconomic tools.
An important topic in this module is health insurance, with consumers of health care deciding on their purchase of health insurance depending on the risk of illness. However, full coverage of health insurance often leads to moral hazard and over-consumption of health care. Thus, health insurance providers adopt strategies such as deductibles and coinsurance rates to tackle the information asymmetry.
Subsequently, the organisation of the health insurance markets is studied. As the purchase of insurance often incur a loading (transaction) cost, the insurance providers may benefit from economies of scale. This topic examines the effect of the loading costs on the labour market. This chapter also introduces the Goddeeris model which studies the cost-increasing bias hypothesis where innovators are motivated to innovate cost-increasing medical technologies.
The physicians play a significant role in the health industry and this module look at how physician chooses the optimal level of health provision and induction effort to sell unnecessary health products fir profits, as well as how competition and reputation affects the physician's practice.
The closing chapter deals with the equity and efficiency in the health markets. Health inequality in the population is studied using the fundamental theorems of welfare economics and the inequality is measured in a way similar to the Gini coefficient.
This module gives some insight to the structure of the health industry and the motivation behind the demand and supply of health care and health insurance. This module introduces a basic analysis framework and encourages students to think further into the motivation behind the health industry, that is, in what ways does health directly and indirectly improves the quality of life, and we should model health providers as capitalists or altruistic in nature.
Workload: Light
Difficulty: Easy
Grade: A
Course Coverage:
1. Tools in Health Economics
2. Demand & Supply of Health Care
3. Health Insurance
4. Asymmetric Information & Agency
5. Organisation of Health Insurance Market
6. The Physician's Practice
7. Equity, Efficiency & Need
This module introduces the economics of health and focus on the interaction between patients, physicians and health insurance providers.
The module opens with common tools of measurements in health economics, including regression analysis and cost-benefit analysis. Next, the factors of demand and supply of health care and its equilibrium is studied using standard microeconomic tools.
An important topic in this module is health insurance, with consumers of health care deciding on their purchase of health insurance depending on the risk of illness. However, full coverage of health insurance often leads to moral hazard and over-consumption of health care. Thus, health insurance providers adopt strategies such as deductibles and coinsurance rates to tackle the information asymmetry.
Subsequently, the organisation of the health insurance markets is studied. As the purchase of insurance often incur a loading (transaction) cost, the insurance providers may benefit from economies of scale. This topic examines the effect of the loading costs on the labour market. This chapter also introduces the Goddeeris model which studies the cost-increasing bias hypothesis where innovators are motivated to innovate cost-increasing medical technologies.
The physicians play a significant role in the health industry and this module look at how physician chooses the optimal level of health provision and induction effort to sell unnecessary health products fir profits, as well as how competition and reputation affects the physician's practice.
The closing chapter deals with the equity and efficiency in the health markets. Health inequality in the population is studied using the fundamental theorems of welfare economics and the inequality is measured in a way similar to the Gini coefficient.
This module gives some insight to the structure of the health industry and the motivation behind the demand and supply of health care and health insurance. This module introduces a basic analysis framework and encourages students to think further into the motivation behind the health industry, that is, in what ways does health directly and indirectly improves the quality of life, and we should model health providers as capitalists or altruistic in nature.
Workload: Light
Difficulty: Easy
Grade: A