What theories can economics draw upon to evaluate Health care reforms?

Kevin I: What theories can economics draw upon to evaluate Health care reforms?
Hi, I am a stduent studying Health Economics.
I am just wondering what kind of economic theories we can use when evaluating the health care reform.

Please let me know if you have any idea and thanks for reading!

Answers and Views:

Answer by pjmo_99
The two main schools of thought revolve around increased competition utilizing the power of markets to lower costs while maintaining quality or increasing government control to dictate prices.

The problem with using markets exclusively is that it requires the end user to be directly involved in purchasing care. Minimum levels of sophistication regarding how much treatments, procedures, and medicine should cost fall to the consumer of the care. The cost of care should come down as the consumer makes conscious decisions based on their symptoms on whether or not to see a physician and how much they should pay that physician for the care they will need.

Government mandated pricing will lower the price paid for care by setting up a single payer for all medical treatment within the country. However, this has proven to force providers to ration care because they will only be compensated by the government at a level that is less than optimal for handling the demand for services. While everyone in the country will have “insurance”, many will go without actual care.

The Cato Institute has plenty of in depth resources.

Answer by azkazk2005
Economics theories on Health:

Welfare and microeconomics
Development
Individual Preferences
Public Goods
Costs and long run Social Benefits

First of all, health is an important matter related to the Welfare function of a nation.
W=W(h,ß)
The problem is to solve it doing Max W subject to a restriction of resources, monetary and non monetary.

The problem that arises is that welfare functions are not well defined though sometimes they can be deduced from individual utilities functions. Ordering microeconomic preferences of the individuals can also be one of the solutions.
On Health matters, unfortunately there´re no agreement because, essentially health is, in modern times, a problem for development.

When we focus on direct and real problems we have to build buildings such as hospitals and smaller centers minimizing costs such as transportation of the wounded, surgery rooms…using scientific managment if possible, and maximizing public welfare as a whole. We have to maximize other utilities, choosing the most efficient tecniques given a type of population and heath risks associated in the present and the future.

Most times political decisions are carried out when choosing locations and size of health centers but a good economist can take into account this fact as a variable in their models, getting a value that can vary from 0 or right wing to 1 or left wing.

µ=political decision
0<µ<1

To cut a long story short we can say that nobody is happy in the end and this has got too a good reason. All methods, all systems, all models and all decisions related to Health Economics are only parts or patches to a problem we only think of when we are ill.