Provides a framework for understanding the effects of changes in the Military Health System benefit structure on the demand for health care services paid for by the DoD.

A seminal work in health economics first published in 1972, Michael Grossman's The Demand for Health introduced a new theoretical model for determining the health status of the population. His work uniquely synthesized economic and public health knowledge and has catalyzed a vastly influential body of health economics literature. It is well past time to bring this important work back into print. Grossman bases his approach on Gary S. Becker's household production function model and his theory of investment in human capital. Consumers demand health, which can include illness-free days in a given year or life expectancy, and then produce it through the input of medical care services, diet, other market goods and services, and time. Grossman also treats health and knowledge as equal parts of the durable stock of human capital. Consumers therefore have an incentive to invest in health to increase their earnings in the future. From here, Grossman examines complementarities between health capital and other forms of human capital, the most important of which is knowledge capital earned through schooling and its effect on the efficiency of production. He concludes that the rate of return on investing in health by increasing education may exceed the rate of return on investing in health through greater medical care. Higher income may not lead to better health outcomes, as wealth enables the consumption of goods and services with adverse health effects. These are some of the major revelations of Grossman's model, findings that have great relevance as we struggle to understand the links between poverty, education, structural disadvantages, and health.

Why do people buy health insurance? Conventional theory holds that people purchase insurance because they prefer the certainty of paying a small premium to the risk of getting sick and paying a large medical bill. This book presents a new theory of consumer demand for health insurance. It holds that people purchase insurance to obtain additional "income" when they become ill.

Addressing the challenge of covering heath care expenses—while minimizing economic risks. Moral hazard—the tendency to change behavior when the cost of that behavior will be borne by others—is a particularly tricky question when considering health care. Kenneth J. Arrow’s seminal 1963 paper on this topic (included in this volume) was one of the first to explore the implication of moral hazard for health care, and Amy Finkelstein—recognized as one of the world’s foremost experts on the topic—here examines this issue in the context of contemporary American health care policy. Drawing on research from both the original RAND Health Insurance Experiment and her own research, including a 2008 Health Insurance Experiment in Oregon, Finkelstein presents compelling evidence that health insurance does indeed affect medical spending and encourages policy solutions that acknowledge and account for this. The volume also features commentaries and insights from other renowned economists, including an introduction by Joseph P. Newhouse that provides context for the discussion, a commentary from Jonathan Gruber that considers provider-side moral hazard, and reflections from Joseph E. Stiglitz and Kenneth J. Arrow. “Reads like a fireside chat among a group of distinguished, articulate health economists.” —Choice

Record of Discussion6 Economics of Need: The Experience of the British Health Service; 7 Private Patients in N.H.S. Hospitals: Waiting Lists and Subsidies; 8 Consumer Protection, Incentives and Externalities in the Drug Market; Summary Record of Discussion; 9 Price and Income Elasticities for Medical Care Services; 10 Supplier-Induced Demand: Some Empirical Evidence and Implications; 11 Some Economic Aspects of Mortality in Developed Countries; Summary Record of Discussion; PART THREE: THE IMPACT OF DEMAND FOR HEALTH SERVICES; 12 Health, Hours and Wages

"A conference of the Universities--National Bureau Committee for Economic Research."--T.p.

Econometrics of Health Care - which we have sometimes called 'medico metrics' - is a field in full expansion. The reasons are numerous: our knowl edge of quantitative relations in the field of health econometrics is far from being perfect, a large number of analytical difficulties - combining medical (latent factors, e. g. ) and economic facts (spatial behaviour, e. g. ) are faced by the research worker, medical and pharmaceutical techniques change rapidly, medical costs rocket more than proportionally with available resources, of being tightened. medical budgets are in the process So it is not surprising that the practice of 'hygieconometrics' - to produce a neologism - is more and more included in the programmes of econometri cians. The Applied Econometrics Association has devoted to the topic two symposia in less than three years (Lyons, February 1983; Rotterdam, December 1985), without experiencing any difficulties in getting valuable papers: on econometrics of risks and medical insurance, on the measurement of health status and of efficiency of medical techniques, on general models allowing simulation. These were the themes for the second meeting, but other aspects of medical-economic problems had presented themselves already to the analyst: medical decision making and its consequences, the behaviour of the actors - patients and physicians -, regional medicometrics and what not: some of them have been covered by the first meeting. Finally, in July 1988 took place in Lyons the Fourth International Conference on System Science in Health Care; it should not be astonishing .