Healthcare

This course will provide an introduction to the economics of healthcare markets with a focus on understanding what is inefficient, what reforms and innovations might make things better, and how strategic interactions among firm's impact profits, health outcomes, and social welfare. Topics covered include: measuring the value of health and medical care; the role of health insurance and competition among insurers; assessing healthcare delivery facilities such as hospitals, nursing homes, and retail clinics; whether pharmaceutical prices are too high and whether we should purchase pharmaceuticals from other counties; lessons from behavioral economics about the role of imperfectly informed consumers; and the impact of the Affordable Care Act on health care in the US.

The course focuses on the most critical components and issues in global health in the era of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), and cost-effective innovative solutions. The course will also discuss the Global Health Security Agenda—successes and challenges.

The healthcare delivery system is made up of many organizations from large hospitals to small private practices. The operations of these organizations are complex as they involve many highly trained professionals with a wide range of specializations, sophisticated and expensive technology, and customers (patients) with diverse needs all in an environment that is increasingly cost-sensitive. At the same time quality is multidimensional and hard to measure. In this course, we study the concepts and tools that can increase the efficiency and quality of healthcare delivery processes. We will explore questions of capacity planning, scheduling, and process design in healthcare.

Survey course that looks at demand-side and supply-side factors that influence the delivery of healthcare and health in the US. The course, inherently, challenges the student to consider the appropriate role of government in the US healthcare delivery system.

Population health and health equity frameworks share the recognition that unmet health-related social needs, such as food and/or housing insecurity, may increase the risk of developing chronic conditions and reduce an individual’s ability to manage those conditions. Population health, in turn, has a focus on reducing avoidable healthcare utilization and increased healthcare costs that are often the resulting reality. The focus of health equity, a long-standing framework anchored in social justice, is on the equal distribution of good health with a specific emphasis on groups that are stigmatized, marginalized, and disadvantaged as a result of historical and contemporary policies across domains that systematically affect access to opportunity. Important tensions exist between population health and health equity paradigms.

Healthcare represents 20% of the US economy. It’s a strange beast: government is the largest payer, but large parts of the system – drug development, most insurance, IT, population health management, and a good deal of service provision – are largely based in the private sector. Prices are opaque, incentives shift, and regulation is subject to change. And the legitimacy of private investment in health care is often questioned politically. The purpose of this class is to examine a number of health care investments – a private equity roll-up, the IPO of a health care disruptor, and life sciences venture capital investments, to introduce students to the mix of analytical and strategic judgments involved in investing in a large and dynamic sector. By assessing concrete cases and discussing them with professional investors, students should learn to develop and defend an investment thesis, assess financial, regulatory, technical, and other business risk factors, and relate them to investment decisions.