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Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine, 18e
| Part 1. Introduction to Clinical Medicine > |
Chapter e3. The Economics of Medical Care
Sections: The Economics of Medical Care: Introduction, Further Readings.
Topics Discussed: cost, access, and quality of health care; health care costs; medical economics.
Excerpt:"This chapter attempts to explain to physicians how economists think about physicians and medical care. Economists' mode of thinking has shaped health care policy and institutions and thus the environment in which physicians practice. As a result, it may be useful for physicians to understand some aspects of this way of thinking even if at times it may seem foreign or uncongenial.In the idealized competitive market found in economic textbooks, buyers and sellers know the same amount about the good or service they are buying and selling. When one party knows more—or when goods of different quality are being sold at the same price, which is analytically similar—markets can break down in the following sense: There may be a price at which an equally well informed buyer and seller could make a transaction that would make them both better off, but the transaction does not occur because one party knows more than the other. Hence, both the potential buyer and the potential seller are worse off...."
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