Healthcare Economics from Harvard Business School Online

Module 1: Spending Growth 

Big Questions

• Why is US healthcare so expensive (absolutely)?

• Why is US healthcare so expensive (relative to other countries)?

• Why is health care spending growing?

Key Topics

• Drivers of healthcare spending

• Geographic variation in spending

• Technology and spending

Key Exercises

• Make health care spending growth predictions

• Compare US health care costs to costs in other countries

• Analyze the math behind health care spending

• Examine sources of waste in the healthcare industry

• Explore the role of technology in healthcare spending growth

Module 2: The Role of the Patient      

Big Questions

• What role should patients play in making important choices about their care?

• What role should money play in the decisions of patients?

• Why do people use too much care?

• How do we know what “too much” is?

Key Topics

• Moral hazard

• Distortions caused by insurance

• The normative nature of the demand curve for health care

• Demand elasticity

• Willingness to pay

Key Exercises

• Interpret demand curves

• Explore willingness to pay for health care

• Evaluate different solutions to inefficient consumption of care, such as moral hazard

Module 3: The Role of the Provider and Health Care Production         

Big Questions

• What role should the provider play in determining care patterns?

• What factors affect provider behavior?

• What do we know about the production of health care?

• How do provider behavior and competition influence care?

Key Topics

• Variation in care delivery

• Supply curve

• Medical arms race

• Economics of prevention

• Integration and care coordination

Key Topics

• Analyze clinical decision-making

• Recognize supplier-induced demand and the consequences of the medical arms race

• Explore practice ownership trends

• Determine whether prevention programs and care coordination are cost saving

Module 4: Risk and Insurance

Big Questions

• What is the role of insurance in healthcare?

• Why is the risk pool for health insurance so important and how do we manage it?

• What policies stabilize the risk pool?

• How does the health care system deal with heterogeneous risk?

Key Topics

• Risk

• Risk pooling

• Stability of insurance markets

• Adverse selection

• Role of employers

 Key Exercises

• Explore risk preferences

• Calculate actuarially fair premiums to understand what health insurance is and how it works

• Examine solutions for solving some of the problems with insurance

• Evaluate policy proposals for dealing with information asymmetry and adverse selection

Module 5: Benefit Design

Big Questions

• How can we design insurance plans to promote efficient consumer decision-making?

Key Topics

• High deductible plans

• Tiered and narrow network plans

• Reference pricing

• Value-based insurance designs

Key Exercises

• Explore patient decision-making in health care

• Analyze different approaches for improving patient incentives

Module 6: Payment Reform  

• How do we structure payments to promote efficient provider decision-making?

Key topics

• Distortions generated by fee-for-service

• Episode-based payment models

• Population-based payment models

Key Exercises

• Explore provider decision-making in health care

• Analyze different approaches for improving provider incentives