Instructor: Robin D. Hanson, Associate Professor, Economics (rhanson@gmu.edu, http://robinhanson.com)
Office Hours: Officially Thursday 3:00-4:15p, but I'm usually in at 10A Carow Hall. Email or call ahead (703-993-2326) if you want to be sure.
Catalog Entry:

Econ 496 Health Economics (3:3:0). Prerequisites: ECON 306. Determinants of Health. Supply, Demand, and Institutions of Health Insurance and Care. Evaluation of Market Failure Rationales for Regulation.

Shannon Brownlee, Overtreated, Bloomsbury, 2007, ISBN: 1-58234-580-5. Sample price: $19.

Joseph P. Newhouse And The Insurance Experiment Group, Free For All? Lessons from the RAND Health Insurance Experiment, Harvard University Press, 1993, ISBN: 0-674-31914-1, Sample Price $27.

Sherman Folland, Allen C. Goodman, Miron Stano, Economics of Health and Health Care, 6th Edition, Prentice Hall Business Publishing, 2010, ISBN: 9780136080305, Sample Price $158.

Charles E. Phelps, Health Economics, Addison Wesley Publishing, 2003, ISBN: 0-321-06898-X, Sample Price $145.

For undergraduates: To become familiar with basic facts and issues in health economics, and to be able to make an economically-coherent defense of one's opinions on health policy questions.

• Class Participation Please contribute to class discussions.
• Quizzes Three In-Class Quizzes will given. All examas are open book, open notes. Each quiz will have a random question from the Browlee book.
• Defended Opinions You will turn in written defenses of your opinions on three health policy question. Each one is limited to two pages. Here (on the web) are things to keep in mind when writing your defended opinions.

1. Should we reduce medical subsidies to instead subsidize living with cleaner air: away from cities, and with better ventilation?
2. Shall medical tax breaks be given only for neighborhood group plans, instead of employer group plans?
3. Should all medical practice data be published, aside from data identifying patients?

• Quizzes: Sep 20, Oct 25, Nov 15
• Defended Opinions: Oct 25, Nov 15, Dec 6
• Final: 4:30-7:15pm, Dec 13

Week	Lecture Topic
Aug 30	Overview of Health Economics
Sep 6	What Makes Us Healthy?
Sep 13	Does Medicine Help Health?
Sep 20	Health Externalities, Quiz
Sep 27	More Health Externalities
Oct 4	Medicine in Other Times and Places
Oct 11	no class
Oct 18	Demand for Health and Medicine
Oct 25	Supply of Medicine, Quiz
Nov 1	Health Insurance
Nov 8	Variation in Quality of Medicine
Nov 15	Licensure, Certification, and Bans, Quiz
Nov 22	Thanksgiving Holiday
Nov 29	More On Quality, Explaining Health Strangeness
Dec 6	Review
Dec 13	Final Exam

Lecture Readings and Sources

On the web, this links to a page of sources, most of which have links.

Disability Notice