Class 1: Motivation
Objectives
- Recall the total annual expenditures on health and health care in the U.S.
- Compare U.S. health expenditures and quality to that of other countries
- Explain the debate surrounding the role of prices in U.S. health care expenditures
- Summarize some of the unique economic features of the U.S. health care market
Activities
- Class discussion
- Review the syllabus, schedule, and assignments pages for this class…just to get a feel for the site and how to navigate all of the information.
- Complete the Math Review and Practice Problems
Other Resources
- (Arrow 1963). Link to paper here.
- Data from Gapminder
- Healthcare triage videos: The Healthcare System of the United States and Why Does the US Spend So Much On Healthcare?
- Time, 2013. Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills are Killing Us
- Forbes, 2018. Healthcare: It’s the prices, stupid. Isn’t it?
- Blog, Random Critical Analysis, November 2018. “Why everything you have said about the determinants of health expenditure is wrong in one million charts: A response to Noah Smith.”
- New report on U.S. health care: U.S. Health Care from a Global Perspective
References
Arrow, Kenneth J. 1963. “Uncertainty and the Welfare Economics of Medical Care.” The American Economics Review 53 (5). https://www.aeaweb.org/aer/top20/53.5.941-973.pdf.