Talk:Health economics
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[edit] Overall effort
This is a pretty weak article. Past disagreements, I guess, makes people unwilling to make a serious effort. Health economics may be a low-profile academic discipline, but nevertheless concerns a huge part of the economy and deserves better than this. 82.183.209.109 02:52, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
- I agree - this page is a bit weak! I've added in a reference to the Williams plumbing diagram as an introduction to the article. Would be good to have a copy of the diagram itself here, but not sure about copyright - I'll ask Macmillan if I can put a copy on here when I get around to it.
- I also moved the bullets listing market types to the markets section - it seems more appropriate there, but please correct me if I'm wrong.
- It'd be good to structure the whole page around the eight areas in the plumbing diagram?
- Would be good to see some discussion on here. If there are no objections, I'll make more changes / additions as and when I get the time.
- NB: this is my first edit to a page so please go easy on me :)
- --EdW UK 14:27, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
yree
- Next chance I get, I will start working on this page. I think the start is the differences between Health Economics and Economics. I think Phelps and I will have fun. Nmourfield 15:30, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
- I don't think that the idealogical bias is appropriate to health care economics in general. I think a discussion into the specifics of government intervention within health care is more appropriate. Nmourfield (talk) 14:06, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Macro analysis
Thanks for Gregalton's welcome to wikipedia. This continues to edit my first Wiki post. I've taken his advice and incorporated the phrase "population externalities" as well as two sources. This also resulted in my correcting the reference to one of the sources--thanks for that too!
The article positions health economics as fully focused on microeconomic analysis. There is a case to be made that multi-regional macroeconomic analysis can contribute significantly to assessing population externalities in healthcare impacts by including systemic interactions across regions and time, especially if conducted using high-end multi-regional equilibrium forecasting models such as REMI or REDYN.
As an example, consider analysing protocol training and tracking for chronic-persistent conditions affecting half of US health system costs. Large-scale results from Asheville, NC for diabetes remained robust over a five-year period as reported in the Journal of the American Pharmaceutical Association (http://japha.metapress.com/link.asp?id=m5nm6h0758753345) and as replicated in a number of cities. New York State and elsewhere corroborated these results for mental health (see New York's five year results at http://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/BriefingPapers/BP18.htm). If protocol training and tracking were implemented in context with single-payor resources (i.e., Medicaid, Medicare, S-CHIP, and the Veterans Administration), then it can be posited that...
[a] Demand can be reduced for general hospital services (ERs) and for offices of physicians, only partly offset by less expensive increased demand for clinic and pharmacy services (integrate demand changes in [a] with changes in [b.1] spending on consumer commodities to avoid double counting),
[b] Cost can be reduced [b.1] for individuals (due to reduced co-pays and insurance coverage cost due to reduced ER and physician visits, offset by increases in less expensive pharmacy and clinic visits, resulting in a net increase in disposable income available for non-health purposes), [b.2] for firms (due to reduced health benefit costs, resulting in increased opportunities for capital investment at higher or stable capital/output ratios or for job growth at stable or lower capital/output ratios), and [b.3] for government (due to reduced health benefit costs and health system financing),
[c] Productivity can be increased for the general workforce due to improved protocol outcomes driven by protocol tracking under single-payor financing, resulting in [c.1] reduced time lost by workers including family workforce time diverted to caretaking, [c.2] better skills-occupations-requirements alignment due to expanded health portability enabling an increased ability to switch jobs, [c.3] new capital investment, and [c.4] higher training ROI due to reduced worry and distraction, i.e., a Hawthorne effect.
The productivity modeling needs to account for (a) capital and labor factor substitution due to the reduced benefit cost of labor, and (b) effects from improved capital stock, increased skills alignment and training ROI, and reduced sick leave usage. The use of multi-regional sub-national analysis ensures domestic trade flow and commuter shed effects are captured together with regional differences in starting conditions and infrastructure. The point in citing this detail is to demonstrate that healthcare economics includes a basis for macroeconomic multi-regional systemic analysis, not only or primarily microeconomic decision analysis. (71.192.212.228 (talk) 16:18, 2 May 2008 (UTC))(71.192.212.228 (talk) 16:05, 2 May 2008 (UTC))(71.192.212.228 (talk) 13:42, 30 April 2008 (UTC))(71.192.212.228 (talk) 19:11, 26 April 2008 (UTC))(71.192.212.228 (talk) 12:54, 24 April 2008 (UTC))(71.192.212.228 (talk) 21:30, 23 April 2008 (UTC)) (71.192.212.228 (talk) 20:34, 23 April 2008 (UTC))(71.192.212.228 (talk) 19:04, 23 April 2008 (UTC)) (71.192.212.228 (talk) 18:49, 23 April 2008 (UTC)) (71.192.212.228 (talk))(71.192.212.228 (talk) 13:38, 23 April 2008 (UTC))(71.192.212.228 (talk) 22:06, 22 April 2008 (UTC))
- Welcome to wikipedia. The ideas above (if I understand correctly) are fine, although you need above all a source. As an alternative, I'd paraphrase and simplify to something like "Externalities in health care, such as the benefit received by the population when others are vaccinated, can have effects of a macro scale on the economy. For example, there is evidence that better health care results in the workforce receiving more education overall, which increases skills and boosts overall productivity." Just a suggestion.--Gregalton (talk) 13:23, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
