Charles E. Phelps provides a comprehensive look at our health care system, including how the current system evolved, how the health care sector behaves, and a detailed analysis of "the good, the bad, and the ugly" parts of the system—from technological advances (the "good") to variations in treatment patterns (the "bad") to hidden costs and perverse incentives (the "ugly"). He shows that much of the cost of health care ultimately derives from our own lifestyle choices and thus that educati...

Cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) plays an important role in health policy debates, helping to shape resource allocation and pricing decisions. Yet many economists also recognize that the current framework can offer misleading and incomplete results. Current CEA methods imply that health improvements are equally valuable to those in good health and poor health, which fails to recognize the increased value of health improvements for those with severe illness or disability. Valuing Healt...

Systems engineering offers a set of capabilities and competencies to design and manage complex systems as they evolve. Drawing from social choice research and systems engineering practice, Making Better Choices examines how we make decisions together and the tools we use to arrive at those decisions. It takes a critical look at the rules and methods we apply to important decisions--from how we run meetings to how we elect presidents--with an interest in how we can improve these me...

Can we really use economic thinking to understand our health care system? Health Economics, now in its sixth edition, not only shows how this is done, but also provides the tools to analyze the economic behavior of patients and providers in health care markets.Health Economics combines current economic theory, recent research, and up-to-date empirical studies into a comprehensive overview of the field. Key changes to this edition include:additional ...

In this book, Phelps and Parente explore the US health care system and set out the case for its reform. They trace the foundations of today’s system, and show how distortions in the incentives facing participants in the health care market could be corrected in order to achieve lower costs, a higher quality of care, a higher level of patient safety, and a more efficient allocation of health care resources.Phelps and Parente propose novel yet economically robust changes to US tax law...

A visionary investigation that will change the way we think about health care: how and why it is failing, why expanding coverage will actually make things worse, and how our health care can be transformed into a transparent, affordable, successful system.In 2007, David Goldhill’s father died from infections acquired in a hospital, one of more than two hundred thousand avoidable deaths per year caused by medical error. The bill was enormous—and Medicare paid it. These circumstances l...

The definitive story of American health care today -- its causes, consequences, and confusions.In March 2010, the Affordable Care Act was signed into law. It was the most extensive reform of America's health care system since at least the creation of Medicare in 1965, and maybe ever. The ACA was controversial and highly political, and the law faced legal challenges reaching all the way to the Supreme Court; it even precipitated a government shutdown. It was a signa...

The Fisher Investments On series is designed to provide individual investors, students, and aspiring investment professionals the tools necessary to understand and analyze investment opportunities—primarily for investing in global stocks.Each guide is an easily accessible primer to economic sectors, regions, or other components of the global stock market. While this guide is specifically on HealthCare, the basic investment methodology is applicable for analyzing an...

Is your portfolio in peak health?Ranking among the world's largest markets, the $2.5 trillion health care industry is growing at an unprecedented rate. According to Miller Tabak + Co.'s health care strategist Les Funtleyder, major structural renovations to the system are imminent. “Health care is entering an era of reform,” Funtleyder writes, “and with reform comes change and the opportunity for investment gain.”Health-Care Investing provides a tho...

The U.S. healthcare system is in critical condition--but this should come as a surprise to no one. Yet until now the solutions proposed have been unworkable, pie-in-the-sky plans that have had little chance of becoming law and even less of succeeding. In Code Red, David Dranove, one of the nation's leading experts on the economics of healthcare, proposes a set of feasible solutions that address access, efficiency, and quality.Dranove offers pragmatic remedies, some of them...

America spends more than any other developed nation on healthcare -- 2.1 trillion in 2007 alone. But 47 million Americans remain uninsured, and of those Americans who are insured, many suffer from poor health. In his ground-breaking proposal, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel offers up a plan to comprehensively restructure the delivery and quality of our healthcare. By eliminating employer-healthcare and establishing an independent program to evaluate healthcare plans and insurance companies, he offers ...

Sustainable Healthcare Reform begins with an analysis of the evolution of employer-sponsored healthcare in the United States. It examines the various social programs that followed to include Medicare, Medicaid and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The book examines the role of managed care in shaping healthcare as it exists today and discusses the formation of a healthcare cartel as the health insurance markets consolidate and the remaining insurers in concert with the federa...