What is health economics?
(Lecture notes only)
II. The production of health
a. Statistics detour –
difference-in-difference models (Lecture notes only)
b. An historical perspective
#Cutler, David, Angus
Deaton, and Adriana Lleras-Muney, 2006. “The Determinants of
Mortality.” Journal of Economic
Perspectives, 20(3), 97-120.
#McKeown,
Thomas, The Role of Medicine: Dream, Mirage or Nemesis, London, England:
Nuffield Provincial Hospitals Trust; 1976, pages 29-65. Chapter 3. Chapter
4. (I’ve also included a link to Chapter 8. You are not required to read it but just look
at the graphs in the chapter especially 8.1, 8.5, 8.8-8.10, 8.14).
#Fogel,
Robert, The Escape
from Hunger and Premature Death, 1700-2100, Cambridge, UK :Cambridge University Press, 2005, 1-42.
#Cutler, David and Grant
Miller, “The Role of
Public Health Improvements in Health Advances:
The Twentieth-Century United States.” Demography
42(1), 2005, 1-22.
c.
Health and
development: macro and micro
perspectives
Bloom, David E. and David
Canning, “The Health
and Wealth of Nations,” Science,
2000, 287(5456), 1207-1208.
#Acemoglu,
Daron, and Simon Johnson, 2007. "Disease and Development:
The Effect of Life Expectancy on Economic Growth," Journal of Political Economy, 115 (6),
December, 925-985 (Focus on Pages 925-945).
#Cutler, David M., Winnie
Fung, Michael Kremer, Monica Singhal, and Tom Vogl, 2010. “Early-life Malaria
Exposure and Adult Outcomes: Evidence from Malaria Eradication in India,” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics,
2(2), 72-94.
#Bleakley,
Hoyt. 2007. “Disease and
Development: Evidence from Hookworm
Eradication in the American South.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 122(1):
73-117.
d.
Statistics detour –
Regression Discontinuity Design
e.
Modern correlates of
health
#Clark, Damon, and
Heather Royer. 2014. “The Effect
of Education on Adult Mortality and Heath:
Evidence from Britain.” American Economic Review
#Sullivan, Daniel and
Till von Wachter, 2009. “Job Displacement and
Mortality: An Analysis Using Administrative Data.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 124(3), 1265-1306.
#Chetty, Raj, et al. 2016. “The Association Between Income and Life Expectancy in the US, 2001-2014.” JAMA 315(16):
1750-1766.
III. The
Government control of unhealthy behavior
a.
Pigouvian taxes
Gruber, J., Chapters 5& 6 of Public Finance and Public Policy, 2005,
New York: Worth Publishers.
b.
Do smokers and drinkers
pay their way?
#Manning, WB, EB Keeler, JP Newhouse, EM Sloss, J
Wasserman. “The taxes of sin. Do smokers and drinkers pay their way?” JAMA 1989 Mar 17, 261(11):1604-1609.
Viscusi, W. Kip, “How to Value a Life.”, Journal of Economics
and Finance, 32(2008): 311-323.
c.
Explaining the rise on
obesity and can taxes work again?
#Cutler, David, Edward Glaeser and Jesse Shapiro, 2003. “Why Have Americans
Become More Obese?” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 17(3).
93-118.
#Fletcher, Jason M.,
David Frisvold, and Nathan Teftt.
2010. “The Effect of Soft
Drink Taxes on Child and Adolescent Consumption and Weight Outcomes.” Journal
of Public Economics 94(11-12), 967-974.
d.
Deaths of despair and the
Opioid/Heroin Crisis
#Case, Anne, and Angus
Deaton. 2017. “Mortality
and Morbidity in the 21st Century.” Brookings
Papers of Economic Activity. 397-476
#Evans, William N., Ethan Lieber,
and Patrick Power. 2019. “How the Reformulation
of OxyContin Ignited the Heroin Epidemic.” Review of Economics and Statistics 101(1): 1-15.
#Alpert, Abbie, William N Evans, Ethan Lieber, and David Powell.
2019. “Origins of the Opioid Crisis
and its Enduring Impacts.” NBER
Working paper No. 26500.
IV. Health
insurance and the demand for medical care
a.
Choices under uncertainty
and the role of insurance
Nicholson, Walter, Microeconomic Theory: Basic Principles and Extensions, 7th
edition, Dryden press, 1998. Chapters 8 and 10, p
209-259.
b. Moral hazard
#Newhouse, Joseph, Free
for All, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993, p. 3-28, 31-49,
338-345. Part 1. Part 2.
#Finkelstein, Amy, et
al., 2012. “The Oregon
Health Insurance Experiment: Evidence
from the First Year.” Quarterly
Journal of Economics 127(3), 1057-1106.
#Baicker,
Katherine, et al. 2013. “The Oregon
Experiment – Effects of Medicaid on Clinical Outcomes.” New
England Journal of Medicine 368(18), 1712-1722.
#Chandra, Amitabh, Jonathan Gruber, and Robin
McKnight. 2010. “Patient
Cost-Sharing and Hospitalization Offsets in the Elderly,” American Economic Review 100(1), 1-24.
c.
Adverse selection
Rothschild, Michael and
Joseph Stiglitz, 1976. “Equilibrium in Competitive
Insurance Markets: An Essay on the Economics of Imperfect Information,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 90(4):
629-650.
#Cutler,
David M., and Sarah J. Reber, “Paying for Health Insurance: The
Tradeoff Between Competition and Adverse Selection,”
Quarterly Journal of Economics,
113(2), pp. 433-466.
#Simon, Kosali, “Adverse
Selection in Health Insurance Markets?
Evidence from State Small-Group Health Insurance Reforms,” Journal of Public Economics, 89, 2005,
1865-1877.
a.
Employer-provided health
insurance
For this section, it
might be useful for you to review your class notes from intermediate micro
economics on income and substitution effects.
Blumenthal, David. 2006. “Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance
in the United States – Origins and Implications.” New
England Journal of Medicine 355: 82-88.
Shiels, J., Haught,
R., “The Cost of Tax-Exempt Health
Benefits in 2004,” Health Affairs, Web
exclusive, February 24, 2004.
Reinhardt, Uwe, 1999. “Employer-Based
Health Insurance: A Balance Sheet,” Health Affairs, 18(6), 124-132.
b.
The health benefits of
insurance coverage
#Card ,
David, Carlos Dobkin, Nicole Maestas,
2009. “Does Medicare Save
Lives?” Quarterly Journal of
Economics, 124(2), 597-636.
#Goldin, Jacob, Ithai Lurie, and Janey McCubbin. 2019. “Health
Insurance and Mortality: Evidence from Taxpayer Outreach.” NBER Working Paper No. 26533.
#Doyle, Joseph J. Jr.
2005. “Health insurance, Treatment
and Outcomes: Using Auto Accidents as Health Shocks.” Review of Economics and Statistics 87(2),
256-270.
f. How health insurance interacts with
the job market
Summers, Lawrence, 1989. “Some Simple Economics of Mandated
Benefits,” American Economic Review, May 177-183.
Krueger, Alan, and Uwe
Reinhart, “The Economics of
Employer versus Individual Mandates,” Health Affairs, Spring (II)
1994, 34-53.
#Gruber, J., 1994. “The Incidence of Mandated
Maternity Benefits,” American
Economic Review, 84(3), 622.641.
#Cutler, David, Jonathan
Gruber, 1996. "Does Public
Insurance Crowd Out Private Insurance," Quarterly Journal of
Economics, 111, 391-430.
Gruber, Jonathan, and Kosali Simon. 2008. “Crowd-Out 10 Years Later:
Have Recent Public Insurance Expansions Crowded Out Private Health Insurance.” Journal
of Health Economics 27(2), 201-217.
V. Medical
technology and health care costs
Newhouse, Joseph, “Medical Care Costs: How Much Welfare
Loss?” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 6(3), 1992, 3-31.
Pauly, Mark. “Should We Be Worried
About High Real Medical Spending Growth in the US?” Health Affairs, Web Exclusive, Jan 8, 2003, w3-15.
#Cutler, D., M.
McClellan, “Is
Technological Change in Medicine Worth It?”
Health Affairs, 20(5), 2001,
11-29.
#Cutler, David, Allison
B. Rosen, and Sandeep Vijan, 2006. “Value of Medical Innovation in
the United States: 1960-2000,” New
England Journal of Medicine, 355(9), 920-927.
Barrett, Jessica, and
Edward R. Berhick. 2016. Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2016, U.S. Census
Bureau, Washington, DC.
https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2017/demo/p60-260.pdf
The last two sections of
the class will put together a lot of what we’ve learned about economics in the
health care sector and look at two current topics.
VI. The Affordable
Care Act
The Kaiser Family
Foundation Summary of the Affordable Care Act
http://kff.org/health-reform/fact-sheet/summary-of-the-affordable-care-act/
Please look over this
document and come to class with five interesting facts about the uninsured.
Barrett, Jessica, and
Edward R. Berhick. 2016. Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2016, U.S. Census
Bureau, Washington, DC.
https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2017/demo/p60-260.pdf
Baicker, Katherine
and Chandra, Amitabh, 2008. “Myths and
Misconceptions about U.S. Health Insurance,” Health Affairs, Web
Exclusive: w533-w543.
Garthwaite, Craig, and John A. Graves. 2017. “Success and Failure in the
Insurance Exchanges.” New England
Journal of Medicine 376(10): 907-910.
McCue,
Michael, and Mark Hall. 2018. “How Have Health Insurers
Performed Financially Under the ACA’s Market Rules.” Commonwealth Fund Issue Brief, October.
#Courtemanche,
James Marton, Benjamin Ukert,
Aaron Yelowitz, and Daniela Zapata. 2017. “Early Impacts of the
Affordable Care Act on Health Insurance Coverage in Medicaid Expansion and
non-Expansion States.” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 36(1):
178-210.
#Frean,
Molly. Jonathan Gruber, and Benjamin D. Sommers. 2017. “Premium subsidies, the Mandate, and
Medicaid Expansion: Coverage Effects of the Affordable Care Act.” 53(1): 72-86.
VII. The COVID-19
Pandemic
Crosby, Alfred. 1989. America’s Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza
of 1918. New York: Cambridge University
Press. This book is not required but it
has a lot of good background information about the 1918 flu. Online access is available from an on-campus
computer via the library at https://www-fulcrum-org.proxy.library.nd.edu/concern/monographs/2j62s512v. Chapters 1, 4, 6 and 7 are interesting. The last two chapters talk about what
happened in Philadelphia and San Francisco when the cities decided to NOT
social distance in the wake of the pandemic.
#Clay,
Karen, Joshua Lewis, Edson Severini. 2019. “What Explains thje Cross-City Variation in Mortality During the 1918
Influenza Pandemic? Evidence from 438 US
Cities.” Economics & Huma
Biology 35: 42-50.
#Almond, Douglas. 2006. “Is the 1918 Influenza Pandemic Over?
Long-term effects of in utero Influenza Exposure in the Post-1940 US
Population.” Journal of Political
Economy 114(4): 672-712.