Instructor: Robin D. Hanson, Asst. Professor, Economics (rhanson@gmu.edu, http://robinhanson.com)
Office Hours: I'm usually in at 10b Carow Hall. Call ahead (703-993-2326) if you want to be sure.
Catalog Entry:

Econ 496, 895 Health Economics (3:3:0). Prerequisite: ECON 306 or permission of instructor. Supply, Demand, and Institutions of Health Insurance and Health Care. Production of Health.

Sherman Folland, Allen C. Goodman, Miron Stano, Economics of Health and Health Care, Prentice Hall Business Publishing, 1997, ISBN 0-13-565987-6, Sample Price $67.

Charles E. Phelps, Health Economics, Addison Wesley Publishing, 1997, ISBN 0-673-99398-1, Sample Price $61.

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 $20.

(You can search for the lowest text price via ClickTheButton.)

For undergraduates: to be able to make an economically-coherent defense of one's opinions on health policy questions.
For graduate students: to in addition write a coherent research paper in health economics.

• Class Participation Please contribute to class discussions.
• Quizes Four In-Class Quizes will given, roughly every three weeks. Each cover preceeding three weeks of lectures.
• Research Paper Those who take this class as Econ 895, a graduate class, are required to write a research paper on a health economics topic of their choosing.
• Defended Opinions Four times you will turn in a written defense of your opinions on health policy questions of your choosing. You may choose the same questions each time. It is hoped that your defenses will improve in response to the comments you get on previous versions. I have a list of things to keep in mind when writing them.

• Quizes: 22Feb,21Mar,11Apr,9May
• Defended Opinions: 3Feb,28Mar,18Apr,4May
• Paper: 9May

1. 496: Class Participate 6%, Four Quizes 6% each, Four Defended Opinions, 0,10,20,40%.
2. 895: Class Participate 4%, Four Quizes 4% each, Four Defended Opinions, 5,5,10,25%, Paper 35%.

Lecture Readings and Sources

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

Misc Health Links

Yahoo on Health Policy

WebEc on Health Econ

Health Econ Places to Go

HealthEconomics.com

Sample Health Editorials

Patchwork Health Care, by Robert Kuttner

Public Health vs. The Nanny State?