Applied Healthcare Economics

Mark V. Pauly is the Bendheim Professor Emeritus of Health Care Management and Economics in the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He has taught courses in health economics and health care management for fifty-five years at Northwestern University and at the Wharton School. As one of the nation's leading health economists, he has made significant contributions to the fields of health economics and insurance.

• Preface: what managers should do; 1. Management mission impossible: my care is okay, but the system is broken; 2. Ideal decisions with and about evidence; 3: The managerial problem with primary care: coaching the quarterback of a team of cats; 4. Doctors and hospitals: can we please get along?; 5. How good can we be? How big should we be? Should we try to conquer the world?; 6. Dancing in the dark: managing with moral hazard, adverse selection, and other information imperfections; 7. Managing insurance and managing with insurance; 8. Cost effectiveness and insurance coverage: messages for true believers; 9. Value-based everything in health care: what is beyond slogans?; 10. Pricing that violates economic law: how to learn to love price discrimination; 11. Who is the buyer of insured medical care?; 12. Competition, antitrust, and regulation in hospital and health care markets; 13. Cost containment; 14. Drugs: of golden eggs, outrage, and what to do when you don't have a clue; 15. Social determinants of health and health spending: can health care change the world?; 16: Conclusion: don'ts, do's and debunks from economics.

'In his wide-ranging tour of the field of health economics, Mark Pauly packages decades of economic theory and evidence into practical insights for today's healthcare managers. Rather than telling managers what to do, he lays out the economic underpinnings of the core concepts in healthcare markets, providing managers with a framework for decision-making as well as guidance for how to manage in the face of uncertainty and imperfect information. The text provides new insights on perennial challenges in healthcare markets, including understanding the difference between cost and value, the tradeoffs facing health insurers in designing products, the challenges in organizing healthcare delivery, and how to make sense of our complex system of buying and selling pharmaceuticals. This is essential reading for the managers and policymakers whose decisions shape our healthcare system.' Kate Bundorf, J. Alexander McMahon Distinguished Professor of Health Policy and Management, Duke University