Curriculum Healthcare Economics
Healthcare Economics
How markets, insurance, and policy shape the cost and availability of medical care.
- Why Healthcare Markets Don't Work Like Other Markets The features that make healthcare a textbook case of market failure - and why ordinary supply and demand doesn't apply cleanly. 📄 Read-aloud
- How Health Insurance Premiums Are Actually Set The math insurers use to turn unpredictable individual medical costs into a predictable monthly bill. 📄 Read-aloud
- The Real Reason Prescription Drugs Cost So Much Patents, research costs, and negotiating power all play a role in drug pricing - and none of them is the whole story. 📄 Read-aloud
- Hospital Pricing and the Mystery of the Chargemaster Why the sticker price on a hospital bill almost never matches what anyone actually pays. 📄 Read-aloud
- Healthcare Economics: Checkpoint 1 Covers why healthcare markets behave differently, how premiums are set, drug pricing, and hospital chargemasters. 5 questions
- Universal Healthcare Systems Around the World A tour of the main ways countries organize universal coverage, and the trade-offs baked into each model. 📄 Read-aloud
- Moral Hazard in Healthcare: Why Insurance Changes Behavior Why having insurance can quietly change how much healthcare people use, and how insurers try to manage it. 📄 Read-aloud
- The Economics of Preventive Care Why cheap checkups today can prevent far more expensive emergencies later, and why that logic doesn't always play out as neatly as it sounds. 📄 Read-aloud
- Why Healthcare Costs Keep Rising Faster Than Inflation Medical technology, an aging population, and administrative complexity all push healthcare spending up faster than prices in general. 📄 Read-aloud
- Healthcare Economics: Checkpoint 2 Covers universal healthcare systems, moral hazard, preventive care economics, and why healthcare costs rise faster than inflation. 5 questions
- Medical Debt and Its Ripple Effects How a single unexpected medical bill can cascade into credit damage, delayed care, and broader financial instability. 📄 Read-aloud
- The Economics of an Aging Population's Healthcare Needs Why a growing share of older residents reshapes healthcare spending, workforce needs, and how systems are funded. 📄 Read-aloud
- Generic Drugs and the Economics of Patents What happens to price and competition the moment a drug's patent exclusivity expires. 📄 Read-aloud
- Telemedicine and the Changing Cost of Care How remote consultations are reshaping healthcare's cost structure, access, and some of the market failures covered earlier in this module. 📄 Read-aloud
- Healthcare Economics: Checkpoint 3 Covers medical debt, an aging population's healthcare needs, generic drugs and patents, and telemedicine's changing cost structure. 5 questions
- Hospital Mergers and the Economics of Consolidation Why hospitals keep merging into larger systems, and why the promised savings don't reliably reach patients. 📄 Read-aloud
- Defensive Medicine and the Economics of Malpractice How the threat of a malpractice lawsuit shapes which tests and treatments doctors order, and at what cost. 📄 Read-aloud
- Health Savings Accounts and Consumer-Directed Care The economic theory behind letting patients shop with their own money for care, and where that theory runs into trouble. 📄 Read-aloud
- Vaccines and the Economics of Herd Immunity Why vaccination has effects on other people beyond the person vaccinated, and what that means for how it should be priced and encouraged. 📄 Read-aloud
- Value-Based Care: Paying for Outcomes, Not Procedures A shift in how healthcare providers are paid, from rewarding the volume of services delivered to rewarding patient outcomes. 📄 Read-aloud
- The Economics of Physician Shortages Why many regions and specialties face doctor shortages despite high demand and high pay, and what economics says about why. 📄 Read-aloud
- Health Insurance Exchanges and the ACA Marketplace How the US built a regulated marketplace for individual health insurance, and the economic problems it was designed to address. 📄 Read-aloud
- Ayushman Bharat PM-JAY How India's large public health insurance scheme pays for hospital care for poorer families, what it covers, and what evidence shows. 📄 Read-aloud
- The Economics of Organ Donation Why there is a severe shortage of donated organs, the debate over incentives and payment, and policies like opt-out systems that aim to increase donation. 📄 Read-aloud
- Out-of-Pocket Health Spending in India Why Indian households pay a large share of health costs directly, how this pushes families into poverty, and how the share has been changing. 📄 Read-aloud
- Jan Aushadhi: Cheap Generic Medicines for All How India's network of government-backed generic medicine stores sells medicines far below branded prices, and the challenges of trust and quality. 📄 Read-aloud