What really affects people’s health? This book summarizes a series of things that impact the usual economic understanding of health, medical care, and how they interact, but it does not attempt to duplicate the usual textbook in terms of material covered or organizational logic. Rather, it focuses on health-affecting aspects of the world that surrounds medical care markets. The book has the following main sections:
Life Style (alcohol, drugs, tobacco, exercise, obesity, guns): What’s known about the relationship of these to health outcomes, and what do societies do to “control” them?
Technical Change in Health Care: What leads to technical change (NIH research, patent law and incentives for invention), and how do societies “manage” the introduction of these new technologies (FDA, Medicare and private insurance rules, etc., as well as international comparison.
Information: How do consumers acquire and use information, and how is it controlled? Who owns information about individuals’ health status? How does information (in particular, consumer search) affect market equilibrium in health care? How do providers learn about treatment efficacy, and what do they (or don’t they) know about this?
Tools for Health Economists: Cost-effectiveness analysis primer and Clinical Epidemiology Primer
