Introducing Health Economics

1
Introducing Health Economics

• Economics, Health and Health Economics
• Key Economic Concepts
• Exercise
• Seminar Allocation

2
Economics, Health and Health Economics

• 1. What is Economics?
• 2. What is Health?
• 3. What is Health Economics?

3
What is Economics?

• Economics is
• concerned with money?
• the same as accountancy?
• only practised by economists?
• objective?

4
Economics in a nutshell

• Resources are scarce
• What we want is unlimited
• Therefore involves choice
• Max. bens/min. resources efficiency

5
Pessimist bottle ½ empty
Optimist bottle ½ full
Economist bottle ½ wasted
inefficient!
6
Economics and Money

• ECONOMICS costs (resource use)
• benefits
• choice
• efficiency
• MONEY store of value
• means of exchange

7
Economics ? Accountancy

• ECONOMICS costs (resource use)
• benefits
• choice
• efficiency
• ACCOUNTANCY monitor of financial
  transactions

8
Only Economists Practice Economics?

• ECONOMICS costs (resource use)
• benefits
• CHOICE
• efficiency
• Weigh-up relative benefits of each course of
  action and choose the action which maximises
  well-being.

9
Economics ? Objective

• All decisions are based on subjective value
  judgements.
• Economics makes these explicit.

10
Topic Versus Discipline

• TOPIC area of study
• DISCIPLINE conceptual apparatus
• Health economics is the discipline of economics
  applied to the topic of health.

11
What is Health?

• World Health Organisation
• Health is a state of complete physical, mental
  and social well-being
• Health Economics is often Health Care
  Economics.

12
Task of Economics

• Descriptive quantification
• Predictive identify impact of change
• Evaluative relative preference over
  situations