Innovation and Shortage: The Yin and Yang of the Health Sector

Karen Eggleston

Acta Oeconomica, 2018, vol. 68, issue supplement1, 99-114

Abstract: The economic challenges countries face when adopting personalized medicine technologies provide an important illustration of many of the concepts articulated by János Kornai in his pioneering research on innovation in market-driven, capitalist surplus economies. In Chinese philosophy, Yin and Yang often represent contradictory yet inseparable opposites – two forces that not merely coexist, but are synergistic and mutually dependent. This concept is an apt analogy for the relationship between innovation and shortage in the health sector. Dangers arise from over-emphasizing the Yin of innovation over the Yang of access, and vice versa. If we over-constrain innovation, we die needlessly early and forfeit quality of life that innovations might have enabled. If we do not distribute access to innovations equitably, we diminish our humanity, suffer backlashes from populism and distrust of science and expertise, and risk social instability, even violent conflict.

Keywords: health sector; personalized medicine; innovation; health technologies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H51 H57 I0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
Note: This paper is dedicated to Professor János KORNAI, an inspiring intellect and mentor, who will turn 90 years old on January 21, 2018. I am grateful to Péter Mihályi for his kind invitation to contribute to this special issue of Acta Oeconomica in honor of János, and to Ross Eric Johnson and Hokuto Asano for excellent research assistance.
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.akademiai.com/doi/pdf/10.1556/032.2018.68.S.8 (application/pdf)
subscription

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:aka:aoecon:v:68:y:2018:i:supplement1:p:99-114

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
Akadémiai Kiadó Zrt., P. O. Box 245, H-1519 Budapest, Hungary
https://akjournals.com/

Access Statistics for this article

Acta Oeconomica is currently edited by Mihályi, Péter

More articles in Acta Oeconomica from Akadémiai Kiadó, Hungary
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kriston, Orsolya ().