Health Economics will acquaint students with how microeconomic / industrial organization principles may be applied to health care settings and health policy issues. Students will learn and apply economic principles and theory in the health care setting. The course will show how basic principles of demand and supply apply to health care. Students will study markets for health insurance, demand for hospital care, the market for primary care practitioners and the market for other forms of health care. The course will encompass theories of perfect competition and their limits in health care settings, as well as characteristics of monopoly, oligopoly and monopolistic competition. Economic and regulatory responses to market breakdown will be explored. Additional topics will include production functions for health, demand for hospitals and physicians, dynamic adjustment in health care markets, the concept of externalities, quality issues and quality signals and the implications of consumer sovereignty. Other topics include Medicare and Medicaid, international health system comparisons, behavioral economics and the likely implications of the Affordable Care Act for health care and health economics. Course concepts will also include optimization of resource use, production decisions, incentives, strategic interaction and economic distortions. 2 Credits