Instructor: Robin D. Hanson, Associate Professor, Economics (rhanson@gmu.edu, http://robinhanson.com)
Office Hours: Officially Thursday 4:30-6:30pm, 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, 4th Edition, Prentice Hall Business Publishing, 2007, ISBN: 0-13-100067-5, 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 pay for higher scores on physical fitness tests?
2. Should Medicare or Medicaid let people diagnosed with a condition take a (perhaps discounted) cash equivalent, instead of medical treatment?
3. Should all medical practice data be published, aside from data identifying patients?

• Quizzes: Feb 16, Mar 25, Apr 15
• Defended Opinions: Mar 25, Apr 15, May 6
• Final: 2:15-4:15pm, May 10

Week	Lecture Topic
Jan 19,21	Overview of Health Economics.
Jan 26,28	What Makes Us Healthy?
Feb 2,4	More What Makes Us Healthy?
Feb 9,11	Snow
Feb 16,18	Does Medicine Help Health?
Feb 23,25	Health Externalities
Mar 2,4	Medicine in Other Times and Places
Mar 9,11	Spring Break
Mar 16,18	no class this week
Mar 23,25	Demand for Health and Medicine
Mar 30,Apr 1	Supply of Medicine
Apr 6,8	Health Insurance
Apr 13,15	Variation in Quality of Medicine
Apr 20,22	Licensure, Certification, and Bans
Apr 27,29	Other Ways to Get Information on Quality
May 4		Explaining Health Strangeness
May 10	Final Exam

Lecture Readings and Sources

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

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