Health Care Economics

Health Care and Economics

Debate whether or not economics apply to health care. Be sure to discuss in what ways.

United States is the largest and most diverse society on the globe. In our country, health care and its related policy has always gained special attention reason being the country spends almost 2 trillion dollars every year on health care, which is one in every seven dollars in the economy. U.S is one of the very few nations where all its citizens do not have medical coverage. Although it spends heavily on per capita on health care, and it has the most advanced medical technology system in the world, still it is not the healthiest nation on earth (Garson, 2010). Given the significance of health care sector, it becomes an important field of study especially from the point of view of economics. As a matter of fact, health care and economics are so interlinked that there is separate discipline for it which is now called Health Economics.

Health economics is essentially concerned with matters related to effectiveness, efficiency, value and activities in the production as well as consumption of health care. In simple words, health economists investigate the performance of the health care systems and also health-affecting behaviors for instance smoking and drinking (Phelps, 2003). Economists in this field assess numerous forms of economic information like costs, expenditures and miscellaneous charges associated with health care. Ambiguities are inherent to health, both in patient results as well as monetary issues. The information gap that lies between a patient and a physician generates a state of discrete advantage for the physician, commonly known as asymmetric information. Externalities take place often when thinking health care, particularly in the milieu of contagious disease. For instance, making an attempt to evade catching the common cold influences general public other than the policy makers (Phelps, 2003).

Evaluate the impact of economics on the health care system and the implications of a poor health care system on a nation.

The implications of poor health policy can be very extensive on any nation. The U.S. health-care system at this very moment faces many widely publicized issues, which are widely publicized: the stress of rising costs with an aging population, terrific inefficiencies, and flawed healthcare quality. The importance of health care system from the viewpoint of economy is also visible how policy makers take into account various health concerns in economic decision making. In our country, ...