HEL-3007 Health Economics and Policy - 10 stp

The course gives an introduction to key issues in health economics and policy. The first part explores the concepts of efficiency and equity, and explains how the assumptions of a perfect market are violated in healthcare. By applying basic price theory, we discuss how taxes and subsidies can affect our health related behaviour.

The second part deals with healthcare finance, where we distinguish between the alternative sources of funding, and the different ways of paying providers. We analyze private health insurance, taxation, patient payments, with an emphasis on efficiency and equity aspects. We discuss alternative ways of paying general practitioners and hospitals, exploring the arguments for activity based financing and other incentive mechanisms.

The third part of the course explains methodologies of health economic evaluation, such as cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit analyses. Various ways of measuring health outcomes is discussed with particular emphasis on quality adjusted life years (QALYs). Finally, we discuss some priority relevant issues beyond costs and health outcomes.

Knowledge and understanding:

• understand the concepts of efficiency and equity, and explain the key characteristics of the healthcare market
• understand alternative sources of health care finance, and the various payment systems for hospitals and primary care physicians
• understand the methodologies of economic evaluation in healthcare, including how to measure health outcomes in terms of quality adjusted life years (QALYs).

Skills and competences

• Analyze how taxes and subsidies can affect the demand for (un)healthy goods.
• Analyze incentive mechanisms in the payment systems used for healthcare providers
• Compare costs vs outcomes, and communicate the logic of an economic evaluation

General Proficiency

• Apply prize theory to analyze elasticities in demand for (un)healthy goods and healthcare services
• Apply insights from theories of insurance and voluntary redistribution to explain why patients in many countries face free healthcare
• Communicate how health economic models can be applied to assist decisions on healthcare priority setting