IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ecaffa/v42y2022i1p50-69.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Health economics explained through six questions and answers

Author

Listed:
  • Peter Zweifel

Abstract

Health economics as a discipline is described using six questions to be answered: Is health different from all other goods? Is the ‘cost explosion’ the core issue? What is the relative importance of moral hazard and adverse selection in competitive health insurance? What is the relevance of supplier‐induced demand? For evaluation, is cost effectiveness the appropriate standard? And finally, can the the very high degree of regulation in health care be justified on economic grounds? While the answers are soundly grounded in microeconomic theory, they show that economists interested in health and health care are far from the caricature of penny‐pinching ‘Elephants in a porcelain shop’ (Gbadebo & Reinhardt, 2001).

Suggested Citation

  • Peter Zweifel, 2022. "Health economics explained through six questions and answers," Economic Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(1), pages 50-69, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ecaffa:v:42:y:2022:i:1:p:50-69
    DOI: 10.1111/ecaf.12507
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/ecaf.12507
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/ecaf.12507?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ed Westerhout & Kees Folmer, 2007. "Co-payment systems in health care; between moral hazard and risk reduction," CPB Discussion Paper 78, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    2. Zweifel, Peter & Eichenberger, Reiner, 1992. "The Political Economy of Corporatism in Medicine: Self-Regulation or Cartel Management?," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 4(1), pages 89-108, March.
    3. Louviere,Jordan J. & Hensher,David A. & Swait,Joffre D., 2000. "Stated Choice Methods," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521788304, January.
    4. Schünemann, Johannes & Strulik, Holger & Trimborn, Timo, 2023. "Anticipation of deteriorating health and information avoidance," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    5. Peter Zweifel & Harry Telser & Stephan Vaterlaus, 2006. "Consumer Resistance Against Regulation: The Case of Health Care," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 29(3), pages 319-332, May.
    6. Trine Kjær & Mickael Bech & Christian Kronborg & Morten Mørkbak, 2013. "Public preferences for establishing nephrology facilities in Greenland: estimating willingness-to-pay using a discrete choice experiment," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 14(5), pages 739-748, October.
    7. Lehmann, Hansjorg & Zweifel, Peter, 2004. "Innovation and risk selection in deregulated social health insurance," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(5), pages 997-1012, September.
    8. Grossman, Michael, 1972. "On the Concept of Health Capital and the Demand for Health," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 80(2), pages 223-255, March-Apr.
    9. Peter Zweifel, 2013. "Managed Care: Prescription for Failure? Lessons from Switzerland," ifo DICE Report, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 11(01), pages 27-31, April.
    10. repec:ces:ifodic:v:11:y:2013:i:1:p:19078507 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. M. Christopher Auld & Nirmal Sidhu, 2005. "Schooling, cognitive ability and health," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 14(10), pages 1019-1034, October.
    12. Heckman, James J. & Humphries, John Eric & Veramendi, Gregory & Urzua, Sergio, 2014. "Education, Health and Wages," IZA Discussion Papers 8027, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    13. Vikas Soekhai & Esther W. Bekker-Grob & Alan R. Ellis & Caroline M. Vass, 2019. "Discrete Choice Experiments in Health Economics: Past, Present and Future," PharmacoEconomics, Springer, vol. 37(2), pages 201-226, February.
    14. Mitchell, Matt, 2016. "Do Certificate-of-Need Laws Limit Spending?," Working Papers 07021, George Mason University, Mercatus Center.
    15. Liran Einav & Amy Finkelstein & Mark R. Cullen, 2010. "Estimating Welfare in Insurance Markets Using Variation in Prices," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(3), pages 877-921.
    16. Manning, Willard G, et al, 1987. "Health Insurance and the Demand for Medical Care: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(3), pages 251-277, June.
    17. Becker, Gary S & Grossman, Michael & Murphy, Kevin M, 1994. "An Empirical Analysis of Cigarette Addiction," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(3), pages 396-418, June.
    18. Van de ven, Wynand P.M.M. & Ellis, Randall P., 2000. "Risk adjustment in competitive health plan markets," Handbook of Health Economics, in: A. J. Culyer & J. P. Newhouse (ed.), Handbook of Health Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 14, pages 755-845, Elsevier.
    19. Harry Telser & Peter Zweifel, 2002. "Measuring willingness‐to‐pay for risk reduction: an application of conjoint analysis," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 11(2), pages 129-139, March.
    20. Erkan Erdil & I. Hakan Yetkiner, 2009. "The Granger-causality between health care expenditure and output: a panel data approach," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(4), pages 511-518.
    21. Bosworth, Ryan & Cameron, Trudy Ann & DeShazo, J.R., 2015. "Willingness to pay for public health policies to treat illnesses," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 74-88.
    22. S. Fanshel & J. W. Bush, 1970. "A Health-Status Index and its Application to Health-Services Outcomes," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 18(6), pages 1021-1066, December.
    23. Peter Zweifel, 2013. "Managed Care: Prescription for Failure? Lessons from Switzerland," ifo DICE Report, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 11(1), pages 27-31, 04.
    24. Gerdtham, Ulf-G. & Sogaard, Jes & Andersson, Fredrik & Jonsson, Bengt, 1992. "An econometric analysis of health care expenditure: A cross-section study of the OECD countries," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 63-84, May.
    25. Friedman, Bernard, 1974. "Risk Aversion and the Consumer Choice of Health Insurance Option," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 56(2), pages 209-214, May.
    26. Thomas G. McGuire & Jacob Glazer, 2000. "Optimal Risk Adjustment in Markets with Adverse Selection: An Application to Managed Care," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(4), pages 1055-1071, September.
    27. Joseph P. Newhouse, 1992. "Medical Care Costs: How Much Welfare Loss?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 6(3), pages 3-21, Summer.
    28. Zweifel, Peter & Manning, Willard G., 2000. "Moral hazard and consumer incentives in health care," Handbook of Health Economics, in: A. J. Culyer & J. P. Newhouse (ed.), Handbook of Health Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 8, pages 409-459, Elsevier.
    29. Ehrlich, Isaac & Chuma, Hiroyuki, 1990. "A Model of the Demand for Longevity and the Value of Life Extension," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(4), pages 761-782, August.
    30. Peter Zweifel & Lukas Steinmann & Patrick Eugster, 2005. "The Sisyphus Syndrome in Health Revisited," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 5(2), pages 127-145, June.
    31. van de Ven, Wynand P. M. M. & Beck, Konstantin & Buchner, Florian & Chernichovsky, Dov & Gardiol, Lucien & Holly, Alberto & Lamers, Leida M. & Schokkaert, Erik & Shmueli, Amir & Spycher, Stephan & Van, 2003. "Risk adjustment and risk selection on the sickness fund insurance market in five European countries," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 65(1), pages 75-98, July.
    32. Keith Hartley & Alan Maynard, 1982. "The regulation of the UK pharmaceutical industry: A cost‐benefit analysis," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 3(3), pages 122-130, September.
    33. Dranove, David & Wehner, Paul, 1994. "Physician-induced demand for childbirths," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 61-73, March.
    34. Peter Zweifel, 2012. "The Grossman model after 40 years," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 13(6), pages 677-682, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Peter Zweifel, 2006. "Auftrag und Grenzen der Sozialen Krankenversicherung," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 7(s1), pages 5-26, May.
    2. Peter Zweifel, 2022. "Preference measurement in health using experiments," Central European Journal of Operations Research, Springer;Slovak Society for Operations Research;Hungarian Operational Research Society;Czech Society for Operations Research;Österr. Gesellschaft für Operations Research (ÖGOR);Slovenian Society Informatika - Section for Operational Research;Croatian Operational Research Society, vol. 30(1), pages 49-66, March.
    3. repec:dau:papers:123456789/7972 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Kuhn, Michael & Frankovic, Ivan & Wrzaczek, Stefan, 2017. "Medical Progress, Demand for Health Care, and Economic Performance," VfS Annual Conference 2017 (Vienna): Alternative Structures for Money and Banking 168249, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    5. Peter Zweifel & H. E. Frech, 2016. "Why ‘Optimal’ Payment for Healthcare Providers Can Never be Optimal Under Community Rating," Applied Health Economics and Health Policy, Springer, vol. 14(1), pages 9-20, February.
    6. Felipa de Mello-Sampayo & Sofia de Sousa-Vale, 2014. "Financing Health Care Expenditure in the OECD Countries: Evidence from a Heterogeneous, Cross-Sectional Dependent Panel," Panoeconomicus, Savez ekonomista Vojvodine, Novi Sad, Serbia, vol. 61(2), pages 207-225, March.
    7. Andrew M. Jones & Audrey Laporte & Nigel Rice & Eugenio Zucchelli, 2019. "Dynamic panel data estimation of an integrated Grossman and Becker–Murphy model of health and addiction," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 56(2), pages 703-733, February.
    8. Tamara Fioroni, 2010. "Optimal savings and health spending over the life cycle," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 11(4), pages 355-365, August.
    9. Eugster, Patrick & Sennhauser, Michèle & Zweifel, Peter, 2010. "Capping risk adjustment?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 499-507, July.
    10. Peter Zweifel & Friedrich Breyer, 2012. "The Economics of Social Health Insurance," Chapters, in: Andrew M. Jones (ed.), The Elgar Companion to Health Economics, Second Edition, chapter 12, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    11. Keane, Michael, 2004. "Modeling Health Insurance Choices in “Competitive” Markets," MPRA Paper 55198, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Mocan, H. Naci & Tekin, Erdal & Zax, Jeffrey S., 2004. "The Demand for Medical Care in Urban China," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 289-304, February.
    13. H. E. Frech & Peter Zweifel, 2017. "Market Socialism and Community Rating in Health Insurance," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 59(3), pages 405-427, September.
    14. Khwaja, Ahmed, 2010. "Estimating willingness to pay for medicare using a dynamic life-cycle model of demand for health insurance," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 156(1), pages 130-147, May.
    15. Michael Grossman, 2022. "The demand for health turns 50: Reflections," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(9), pages 1807-1822, September.
    16. Mark Stabile & Sarah Thomson, 2014. "The Changing Role of Government in Financing Health Care: An International Perspective," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 52(2), pages 480-518, June.
    17. Fan, Victoria Y. & Savedoff, William D., 2014. "The health financing transition: A conceptual framework and empirical evidence," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 112-121.
    18. Hullegie, P.G.J., 2012. "Essays on health and labor economics," Other publications TiSEM dcc68fc9-7af1-4ba9-8f90-6, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    19. Volker Grossmann, 2021. "Medical Innovations and Ageing: A Health Economics Perspective," CESifo Working Paper Series 9387, CESifo.
    20. Karolin Becker & Peter Zweifel, 2005. "Cost Sharing in Health Insurance: An Instrument for Risk Selection?," SOI - Working Papers 0513, Socioeconomic Institute - University of Zurich.
    21. Baltagi, Badi H. & Moscone, Francesco, 2010. "Health care expenditure and income in the OECD reconsidered: Evidence from panel data," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 27(4), pages 804-811, July.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:ecaffa:v:42:y:2022:i:1:p:50-69. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0265-0665 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.