Key+topics

Part 1: Health Economics
 * 1) Definition of Economics: What is value? Marginal value?
 * 2) What is Health?
 * 3) Opportunity cost? What are explicit and implicit costs? What is the biggest cost of going to medical school? Costs: What are direct costs, direct non-medical costs, indirect costs?
 * 4) Production Possibilities curve. What does a production possibilities curve show? What will shift them? What will cause you to be inside them?
 * 5) Regression analysis: What do the parameters mean? What is R-squared? What is a t-test? How is it used in health care?
 * 6) Utility: What is utility? Marginal Utility? How does health affect utility?
 * 7) What is medical care?
 * 8) Production of health: Total product, marginal product, law of diminishing marginal productivity. What is "Flat of the curve" medicine. What will shift the total product curve? What causes movements along the curve? What are the major determinates of health (including non-elderly adults, the elderly, children, etc) Include links to health care statistics.

Part 2: Cost benefit analysis Part 3: Supply and demand
 * 1) Cost benefit analysis: What is cost-benefit analysis? What is a present value? What is the effect of interest rates? What are surrogate measures? How do you measure the costs and the benefits?
 * 2) Marginal analysis: When is there over provision and underprovision of health care?
 * 3) Value of life: human capital approach? Willingness to pay approach?
 * 4) Expected value: What is risk aversion?
 * 5) Risk: What are the different risks that you face?
 * 6) Quality adjusted life years (QALY) What is the standard time trade-off approach to measuring quality of life? How can this be applied in forensic economics?
 * 7) Cost effectiveness analysis: What is the difference between cost effectiveness analysis and cost benefit analysis? ICER. Cost utility analysis?
 * 1) Demand for health care: What will shift the demand? How does insurance affect demand? What is a fuzzy demand curve?
 * 2) Demand for health insurance: The effect of tax deductions: Risk adversion,
 * 3) Supply and demand: What will shift supply and demand? What causes price to go to equilibrium? Law of demand. How does insurance affect supply and demand?
 * 4) Prices: What is the CPI? How would you calculate the inflation rate (annual and not annual)? What are some problems with the CPI?
 * 5) Efficiency: What is producer surplus? Consumer surplus? Total Surplus? What is a deadweight loss?
 * 6) Price ceilings and Price floors: What is the effect of a price floor or ceiling? What is the effect of prohibition? How does Medicaid function similar to a price ceiling?
 * 7) Elasticity of demand? What makes it more elastic? How would you calculate point elasticity? What is the total revenue test?
 * 8) cross price elasticity
 * 9) income elasticity
 * 10) Elasticity of input substitution
 * 11) Utility maximizing rule: how can it be applied? optimal amount per dollar spent
 * 12) Income and substitution effects in demand, insurance, and labor markets.

Part 4: Health insurance
 * 1) Health insurance: What is the effect of health insurance? What is the effect of deductibles and coinsurance rates? How do companies decide on a premium? How does insurance affect people’s incentive to have higher quality care? How does that affect health care costs? Includes chapter 11. Why are people uninsured?
 * 2) Managed care plans
 * 3) Expected utility: The demand for health insurance.
 * 4) Reimbursement: How do different reimbursement schemes affect physicians and hospital incentive to provide care? What is the difference in incentives between Fee For Service vs DRGs?
 * 5) Not-for-profit providers: What is the difference in incentives between not for profit and for profit providers? What happens if not-for-profits don’t make a profit?
 * 6) Malpractice insurance.

Part 5: Costs and productivity
 * 1) Costs: How does productivity affect costs? What is the relationship between marginal product and marginal cost? What is the relationship between average product and average variable cost and average total cost? What is marginal revenue? What do each of these curves tell you? Economies of scale.

Part 6: Market structure
 * 1) Perfect Competition: Be able to apply the model.
 * 2) Monopoly (also monopsony): Be able to apply the model.
 * 3) Monopolistic Competition: Be able to apply the model.
 * 4) Oligopoly: Be able to apply the model. Game theory:
 * 5) Measuring market concentration;
 * 6) Lerner index
 * 7) Market for physician services: (chap 12)
 * 8) Hospital services industry (chap 13)
 * 9) Pharmaceutical industry: (chap 14)
 * 10) Long term care: (chap 15)
 * 11) Dental industry

Part 7: Input markets
 * 1) Input markets: Value of the marginal product: Induced demand. Supply and demand in labor markets. Wages of physicians etc.

Part 8: Government
 * 1) Public goods and Positive externalities: What is optimal amount when there are public goods or externalities? What is the optimal amount when there are no externalities of public goods?
 * 2) Negative externalities: What is the optimal amount?
 * 3) Government as health insurer: Medicare, Medicaid, VA, and military medicine, donut holes?
 * 4) Incentives of government officials: Why do many economists argue that the FDA too long to approve new drugs? Why kind of programs to politicians have an incentive to create?
 * 5) Price discrimination: Tying contracts,
 * 6) Antitrust laws: Mergers, tying contracts, exclusive dealings.
 * 7) Equity: vertical and horizontal. Taxes, subsidies,

Part 9: Asymmetric information
 * 1) Adverse selection: asymmetric information
 * 2) Moral hazard: asymmetric information

Part 10: Improving the system
 * 1) Health care reform
 * 2) Epidemiologic transition