INTRODUCTION TO HEALTH ECONOMICS

Prerequisites: (ECON BC1003 or ECON UN1105) This course covers the core microeconomic theories and concepts needed to understand health and health care issues in the United States. It describes how the markets for health and health services are different from those for other goods, with an emphasis on providing the tools and skills for understanding health policy and regulations. In addition, it discusses theoretical and empirical aspects of key health economics issues, with a primary focus on applying the tools of economic analysis to understand the basic forces—supply and demand, asymmetric information, incentives, and externalities, for example—that influence health policies.