Health economics explained through six questions and answers

Peter Zweifel

Economic Affairs, 2022, vol. 42, issue 1, 50-69

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).

Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/ecaf.12507

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:ecaffa:v:42:y:2022:i:1:p:50-69

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0265-0665

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Affairs is currently edited by Philip Booth

More articles in Economic Affairs from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().