Synopsis
This book guides you toward reconsidering the field of health economics as it is taught and practiced. It discusses and analyzes the assumptions that must be met for a competitive market to be successful, concludes that these assumptions are not met in the healthcare field, and provides a number of applications for healthcare policy.
Among the policy issues addressed are:
* Effects of managed care and capitation on patient care
* Access to care by the poor
* Medical savings accounts
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author
Thomas Rice is Professor and Chair of the Department of Health Services at the UCLA School of Public Health. Dr. Rice received his Ph.D. in Economics at the University of California at Berkeley in 1982. He served on the faculty at the University of North Carolina School of Public Health from 1983 to 1991, when he joined UCLA. Dr. Rice has published widely on issues such as competition and regulation in health care, physicians' economic behavior, cost containment, health insurance, and the Medicare program. In 1988, he received the Association for Health Services Research Young Investigator Award, given to the outstanding health services researcher in the United States age 35 or under. In 1992, he received the Thompson Prize from the Association of University Programs in Health Administration, awarded annually to the outstanding health services researcher in the country age 40 or under. Dr. Rice is currently Editor of the journal, Medical Care Research and Review.
From the Back Cover
RECONSIDER THE ECONOMICS OF HEALTH WITH WELL-RESPECTED HEALTH ECONOMIST TOM RICE
"Thomas Rice performs an invaluable service in this book-reminding readers that the conditions under which market allocations produce the best possible outcome are demanding and often violated and showing that these conditions are quite unlikely to be satisfied in the production and delivery of healthcare. A course in health economics that fails to come to grips with the challenges to conventional theory that he lays down simply cannot claim to take seriously the complexities of healthcare." Henry J. Aaron, MacLaury Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution
"With meticulous and far-ranging scholarship, Rice examines the entire battery of assumptions that must be valid and the conditions that must be satisfied before an economist could, in good conscience, declare a so-called 'market-driven' health system superior to alternative arrangements. ... I hope that this book will be widely read and heeded, especially by the next cohorts in our profession." Uwe E. Reinhardt, Ph.D., James Madison Professor of Political Economy, Princeton University
"Tom Rice's The Economics of Health Reconsidered is written for both economists and non-economists. It will challenge the former to reconsider standard economic assumptions as applied to the healthcare system and to reassess whether policy prescriptions should be based on theory without careful empirical tests of the underlying assumptions. It offers non-economists an accessible critique of economic analyses that are divorced from the complexities of the healthcare system and offers guidance in how to use the powerful tools of economics in an appropriate fashion." Harold S. Luft, Ph.D., Professor of Health Economics, Institute for Health Policy Studies, University of California, San Francisco
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