EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Pricing the Priceless: A Health Care Conundrum, vol 1

Joseph Newhouse

in MIT Press Books from The MIT Press

Abstract: The health care industry differs from most other industries in that medical pricing is primarily administered by the government and private insurers and in that it uses several types of contracts. Providers may receive a fixed sum for all necessary services within a given period of time, for the necessary services to treat a given condition, or for each specific service. The industry is changing dramatically, offering many natural experiments to aid understanding of the economics of pricing for health care. In Pricing the Priceless, Joseph Newhouse explains the different pricing systems and how they affect resource allocation and efficiency, focusing on the efficiency of pricing. He also discusses larger issues of equity, fair distribution of burden, and social justice. Although most of the examples are American-based, the same issues arise in all medical care financing and delivery systems, and the theories and models are general enough to apply to many institutional contexts. The topics include Medicare, managed care, the contemporary integration of health insurance and medical care, the management of moral hazard and stinting, uncertainty and risk aversion, the demand for health insurance, agency relationships, information disparities, regulation, and supply-side and demand-side selection.

Keywords: health care industry; medical pricing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004
Edition: 1
ISBN: 0-262-64058-9
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (37)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:mtp:titles:0262640589

Access Statistics for this book

More books in MIT Press Books from The MIT Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by The MIT Press (mitp-repec@mit.edu).

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:mtp:titles:0262640589