PUBPOL 4370

The Economics of Health Care Markets

Course Description

Course information provided by the 2025-2026 Catalog.

This course will review and enhance existing knowledge of health care delivery and related policy issues, using the lens and tools of microeconomics. The topics covered will span consumer behavior, sources and markets for health insurance, provider markets, provider incentives and regulation, as well as market consolidation across a variety of key industries (e.g., physicians, hospitals, and post-acute care providers). Importantly, a key differentiator as well as pedagogical feature of the course will be extensive exposure to classic and contemporary empirical (i.e., data-driven) research tied to these topics. This aspect allows students to be aware of and accumulate knowledge from the frontier of what is scientifically known about key and salient health economics and health policy topics. The selected academic studies incorporated into each lecture will reinforce the core economic theories and insights accompanying a given topic and demonstrate how existing theories can be formally tested as well as refined or expanded using strong empirical research designs. This course should be highly relevant to students planning to work for or with healthcare-focused companies as well as those wishing to pursue master’s (e.g., MBA, MHA, MPH) or doctoral level academic programs (e.g., JD, MD, PharmD, or PhD) tied to healthcare.

Distribution Requirements (SBA-AG), (SSC-AS), (SBA-HE), (OCE-IL, QP-IL)

Last 3 terms offered 2024FA, 2023FA, 2017FA

Learning Outcomes REF-FA25

• Analyze the objectives and behavior of the key stakeholders in the US healthcare system: payers, insurers, providers, and suppliers.
• Apply basic economic reasoning to examine health policy issues and proposals.

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