Health Care Discussion Questions
- Propose several current and future economic issues confronting and changing the healthcare system. Analyze the significant implications of the issues in question for market efficiency of the healthcare system. Provide a rationale for your response.
- Compare and contrast the U.S. health care delivery system relative to spending per capita and ranking of healthcare outcomes with the health care system of two (2) other countries. Provide at least one (1) aspect of the systems from each country selected to support your response.
- Synthesize the primary ways in which consumer and provider incentives work together to achieve cost reduction under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Provide at least one (1) example of such synthesis to support your response.
- Defend or critique the key provisions of antitrust legislation in the United States. Analyze the major ways in which quality issues in health care affect antirust healthcare policy. Provide at least one (1) example of antitrust laws in action to support your response.
- Defend or critique the primary alternative sources of healthcare funding in the United States. Analyze the main effect on the resource owner of one (1) of the following means of financing healthcare: insurance premiums, tax subsidies, and mandated benefits. Provide at least one (1) example which illustrates the selected effect to support your response.
- Analyze the key types of policies required for the delivery of a public health insurance program, and hypothesize their main effects on the achievement of social goals overall. Provide at least one (1) example of such effects to support your response.
- Evaluate the efficacy of major types of health clinical outcomes one can use in economic evaluation analysis. Provide at least one (1) example to support your response concerning clinical outcomes (e.g., infant mortality, average longevity, leading chronic disease, etc.) that one can use in order to conduct economic evaluation.
- Compare and contrast alternative healthcare delivery arrangements in terms of their efficiency. Determine the primary ways in which an established market for health insurance can be efficient, especially when individuals carry less than adequate medical insurance coverage. Provide a rationale for your response.
- Analyze at least two (2) primary economic assumptions and examine their short- and long-term impact on promoting the competitive market model in the healthcare environment. Evaluate the fundamental reasons why price and utilization economic factors in the healthcare setting influence competitive market status in regard to supply and demand for health care services. Provide at least one (1) example of such factors to support your response.
- Take a position on whether or not monopolistic competition works within a healthcare setting. Support for your position should include a discussion of the monopoly model being used to predict the allocation of resources in healthcare markets within preferred provider organizations.
