An appalling stastistic, related to the concept of opportunity cost: One in five wounded Iraq War veterans has a family member who quit a job to make time to care for the veteran. http://www.iava.org/
One student found this presentation on hospital pricing reform. Reinhardt's incremental cost article implies that hospital pricing reform could help make our decisions about the venue of care more rational. Save this for now. We'll come back to this in a couple of weeks.
A health insurance horror story: People sign up and pay for insurance, then Blue Cross (of California) revokes it when they get sick. This example illustrates in an extreme way the lack of consumer sovereignty in the health insurance market, which compounds the problem of lack of consumer sovereignty in health care markets. Here's the story, from the L.A. Times.
Associate Professor
Department of Health Services Policy and Management
Arnold School of Public Health
University of South Carolina
800 Sumter St., Room 121
Columbia, SC 29208
Phone: (803)777-5045 Fax: (803)777-6986
E-mail:
Please put 712 in the subject line
of course-related e-mail. Please use Blackboard,
not e-mail, to submit course work.
The class meets at 6pm-8:30pm on Wednesdays in
Wardlaw room 116. (Map.)
Class meetings are televised live to regional campuses and other
locations with access to the ETV closed-circuit network.
Office hours: 10:00am-12:00pm and 2:00pm-4:00pm on Wednesdays, or by
appointment.
Goals
HSPM J712 introduces the application of economics to decisions
regarding the amount, organization, and distribution of health care
services in the United States. The goals of the course are:
to provide an economics perspective for management
decision-making
to provide theoretical groundwork for the study of finance,
accounting, marketing, and planning
to enable you as future health care managers to play positive
roles in the reform of health care
Learning objectives
You will demonstrate on the course's written assignments and through
class participation:
that you understand and can use basic economics concepts, such
as supply, demand, marginal analysis, the theory of capital, and
cost-benefit analysis,
that you can analyze the economic institutions of the United
States health care system,
that you can discuss controversies surrounding the development
of health insurance and the government's role in providing, financing,
and regulating health services.
What you need to have to take
this course
Prerequisite courses: None. No prior study of economics is
required for this course.
Required purchase:
Three books and a DVD. Please see the news section at the top of the syllabus.
Interactive instruction: A group of computer-based
interactive instructional tutorials is available on the Internet at http://hspm.sph.sc.edu/Courses/Econ/Tutorials.html.
The interactive tutorials introduce basic economics concepts,
particularly
for students with little or no economics background. Your work with the
interactive tutorials is not monitored or graded. These
tutorials
are integrated into the Class Schedule and Readings, as shown below.
All
of the interactive tutorials are available all semester, so you can use
or reuse them at any time.
Required computer access: Students must have access to a
computer with:
The Adobe
Reader for pdf files. Get the free version. During downloading and installing, uncheck all
optional downloads of toolbars, etc.
Computers meeting these requirements are available for student use in
the Department's BlueCross BlueShield and
Companion Technologies Computer Education Center, on the first floor of
the Arnold School of Public Health building. Public libraries and
regional
campuses may also
have computers you can use.
Course Work for Credit
Weekly comment:
Each week, submit a substantive, relevant, comment. The comment be equivalent to about one-half to one page of 12-point single-spaced type. For prose, that's 250 to 500 words. Poems will have fewer words, because their lines are shorter.
Comments are due by the start of class. It can be about that class's ideas, or about the preceding class's ideas.
The first comment is due by the start of the second class. For
classes after that, see the schedule below for which have comments due
and which do not.
The comments are not graded, but do count towards your grade.
Doing all the comments
on time will give you the equivalent of an A for one-third of your
course grade.
Comments that are late or do not bring in course concepts will
get less than full credit.
Good comments can be about:
A personal or work experience that relates to an idea in the
readings or the lecture.
Your thoughts about an idea in the readings or lecture that seems
particularly interesting,
insightful, or pernicious.
A comparison of two readings' ideas.
You learn new concepts by using them. That is the purpose of the comments.
Take-home exams are due on these dates:
Mid-term:
Wed., Oct. 8
Final:
Mon., Dec. 10
Each exam counts for one-third of the grade.
The exams will be distributed via this web site, or by other method
if you request.
Your course grade is one-third the comments, one-third the mid-term
exam, and one-third the final exam.
Class Schedule and Readings
Advice for the overwhelmed: If the reading for this course seems like a lot, see How
2 Read an Article.
August 27 Introduction to the Course -- no comment due
How the course will
operate, and the general shape of the US health care economic sector.
Learning objectives: Basic cost concepts, the accounting of
future costs, methods and ethics of cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness
analysis applied to health care.
Future Cost and Income
September 10
Cost-Benefit, Cost-Effectiveness, and
Cost-Savings Analysis comment
due
Learning objectives: Methodology and ethics in cost-benefit
and
cost-effectiveness analysis, with application to evaluating the
cost-effectiveness of preventive care, the distinction between
cost-effective and cost-saving, and an attempt at policy based on
cost-effectiveness analysis. Then, the concepts of market, supply, and
demand.
Cost-Benefit Analysis
Cost-Effectiveness Analysis
September 17
Health Care on the Market: The Demand for Health Care
-- comment due
Learning objectives: What economists mean by demand; risk and risk aversion, as they relate to insurance;
the basic issue of whether a free market in health care can be efficient; moral hazard.
Supply and Demand introduction
September 24
Health Care Demand II: What's special about health care? comment due
Learning objectives: Insurance concepts, uncertainty in health care choice
October 1
Health Care Demand III -- Optional: Submit one or more exam answers on Blackboard.
October 8 No class
October 15
First Exam Due
October 15 The Supply Side of Health Care Markets
Learning objectives: Competition and monopoly theory,
how the market sets price and quantity in health care
October 15 (This material will also be discussed on Oct. 15.)
The Supply Side continued comment
Learning objectives: How DRG- and RBRV-based payment work.
DRG's -- A tool for controlling hospital prices
RBRVS -- A tool for controlling physician fees
October 22
Managed Care and Consumer-Driven Health Care as solutions comment
due
Who Killed HealthCare?: America's $2 Trillion Medical Problem - and the Consumer-Driven Cure, by Regina Herzlinger
Learning objectives: The history of managed care, results of
managed
care, managed care and quality.
Dec. 10 Second
take-home exam
due by end of day. No class.
To HSPM home page
http://hspm.sph.sc.edu/Courses/712.html
The views and opinions expressed in this page are strictly those of the
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approved by the University of South Carolina.
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