Medical technology broadly defined to include all aspects of the process of treating disease (e.g., pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and surgical procedures) is profoundly important for individual health and, consequently, also for general welfare. Advances in medical technology convey the prospect of both improved population health and increased general welfare. However, because of the extensive regulation of the markets for healthcare goods and services, the development and application ...

Human capital is embodied in human beings. It embraces the individual’s capacity to perform and enjoy activities that provide money and/or psychic income. Health behaviour affects human capital and is itself affected by the individual’s human capital. This volume consists of original theoretical and empirical contributions to our knowledge of the interdependence between Human Capital and Health Behaviour.

This practical text offers the ideal introduction to the economic techniques used in public health.

The problems of medical care confront us daily: a bureaucracy that makes a trip to the doctor worse than a trip to the dentist, doctors who can't practice medicine the way they choose, more than 40 million people without health insurance. "Medical care is in crisis," we are repeatedly told, and so it is. Barely one in five Americans thinks the medical system works well. Enter David M. Cutler, a Harvard economist who served on President Clinton's health care task force and later advised pre...

What new theories, evidence, and policies have shaped health economics in the 21st century? Editors Mark Pauly, Thomas McGuire, and Pedro Pita Barros assemble the expertise of leading authorities in this survey of substantive issues. In 16 chapters they cover recent developments in health economics, from medical spending growth to the demand for health care, the markets for pharmaceutical products, the medical workforce, and equity in health and health care. Its global perspective, includi...

The Oxford Handbook of Health Economics provides an accessible and authoritative guide to health economics, intended for scholars and students in the field, as well as those in adjacent disciplines including health policy and clinical medicine. The chapters stress the direct impact of health economics reasoning on policy and practice, offering readers an introduction to the potential reach of the discipline. Contributions come from internationally-recognized leaders in health econ...

Cost-benefit analysis is the only method of economic evaluation that can effectively indicate whether a health care treatment or intervention is worthwhile. In this thoroughly updated and revised second edition, Robert Brent expands the scope of the field by including the latest concepts and applications throughout all regions of the world. This book attempts to strengthen the link between cost-benefit analysis and the mainstream health care evaluation field, which is dominated by non-econ...

The book comprehensively discusses the various determinants shaping the health sector in India. Based on intensive research, it quantitatively identifies the determinants of health status in India within a macroeconomic framework, taking both the demand and the supply side into consideration. The book also discusses the various economic tools of analysis for understanding the challenges facing the health sector and explains why policy makers should refrain from applying uniform health poli...

In a world where there is increasing demand for the performance of health providers to be measured, there is a need for a more strategic vision of the role that performance measurement can play in securing health system improvement. This volume meets this need by presenting the opportunities and challenges associated with performance measurement in a framework that is clear and easy to understand. It examines the various levels at which health system performance is undertaken, the technica...

The U.S. lacks a long-term care system. The closest it has is Medicaid, a safety net program for the very poor. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, 90% of older persons receiving help with activities of daily living (ADLs) in 2011 relied on some "informal" care, from family members and friends. About two thirds relied on only informal care. Family and friends collectively provided 75–80% of total care hours in non-institutional settings. Synthesizing the latest resear...

Longlisted for British Columbia's National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction 2018Dr. Danielle Martin sees the challenges in our health care system every day. As a family doctor and a hospital vice president, she observes how those deficiencies adversely affect patients. And as a health policy expert, she knows how to close those gaps. A passionate believer in the value of fairness that underpins the Canadian health care system, Dr. Martin is on a mission to improve me...

The U.S. health care system is in crisis. At stake are the quality of care for millions of Americans and the financial well-being of individuals and employers squeezed by skyrocketing premiums—not to mention the stability of state and federal government budgets.In Redefining Health Care, internationally renowned strategy expert Michael Porter and innovation expert Elizabeth Teisberg reveal the underlying—and largely overlooked—causes of the problem, and pr...