Health Care Economics Essay

Health Care The problem is that not enough physicians accept patients using Medicare as payment. In essence, many such physicians feel that the Medicare payouts are insufficient either for them to cover their costs, or to turn a reasonable profit on the transaction. Robinson (2011) notes that public payer in general pay out at lower rates. The public payers are able to deliver volume to health care providers, and this gives them bargaining power, as one of the most significant payers, that allows them to lower their payouts. The problem for many providers is that servicing these clients essentially means a high-volume, low-margin business model. Not all health care providers can, or wish to, operate with this business model. As in any business, this model requires a high level of discipline, and it requires driving down costs throughout the business. Many physicians find the operating model incompatible with what they want in a career, and thus reject this business.

The problem for the government and consumers is that this restricts their access to health care, potentially creating a capacity problem in some jurisdictions. For private payers, Robinson (2011) notes...

...

Economic theories exist in all industries to understand how businesses earn sufficient revenue to cover their costs. This study will look at basic competitive models such as Porter's generic strategies to see how these might be applied to health care organizations. There will also be an examination of basic microeconomic theory, as it seems that there are trade-offs made by many health care providers. One set of trade-offs is that between private payer and public payer. Another set of trade-offs involves the utility of incremental new business (from public payers) versus other quality of life measures, to examine if there is genuinely a connection between physician quality of life and refusal to treat Medicare patients, or if the problem is strictly economic in nature.
Page 2

Payment is typically after the service. This is because a VA hospital usually will have the government as the payer, and they pay after the service has been delivered. The payer mix heavily…

Sources Used in Documents:

References

Robinson, J. (2011). Hospitals respond to Medicare payment shortfalls by both shifting costs and cutting them, based on market concentration. Health Affairs. Vol. 30 (7) 1265-1271.


Cite this Document:

"Health Care Economics" (2015, March 28) Retrieved April 25, 2024, from
https://www.paperdue.com/essay/health-care-economics-2149291

"Health Care Economics" 28 March 2015. Web.25 April. 2024. <
https://www.paperdue.com/essay/health-care-economics-2149291>

"Health Care Economics", 28 March 2015, Accessed.25 April. 2024,
https://www.paperdue.com/essay/health-care-economics-2149291

Related Documents

Healthcare Economics Overall Healthcare And Economics Healthcare economics: Current challenges from a nursing perspective Although the subject of healthcare economics has been hotly-debated, on one issue there is widespread agreement: the aging of the population will substantively increase the demand for healthcare in the near and far future. As the population worldwide is aging and living longer, the need for essential services over a longer lifespan will generate more costs for an already-beleaguered

Health Care Economics In economics, cost-benefit analysis assists in evaluating the costs of an approach in terms of resources spent while cost-effective analysis evaluates the costs as achieving some sort of benefit which is not evaluated in monetary terms. Moreover, cost-benefit study examines several aspects including net-present value, present value of benefit, and present value of costs; in line with this, if a project indicates that the monetary outcome is greater

Health Care Economics Medical Care is never free, although the individual may pay nothing? Medical Care is both a commodity and a service. The process of consuming medical care has a cost, even if the after insurance price is zero to the consumer. For instance, there are hard costs that include the buildings, equipment and supplies that house the medical care or office. There are the wages that are paid for the

Health INS Healthcare Econ During the ten-year period ending with 2009, the administrative costs and the profits of health insurance companies rose slower than other healthcare costs and came to represent an ever-shrinking proportion of healthcare premiums. Much of the increase in administrative costs can be ascribed to inflation, especially during the years prior to the recent recession, and ongoing expansions of healthcare coverage and legislation during the period also required some

This is being done by disseminating and using practice guidelines for various medical conditions and by profiling individual physicians' provision rates. Demand side cost sharing is where patients must contribute more to their healthcare by paying more in copayments and deductibles. One recent advance in health care financing is the health savings account (HSA). These plans rely heavily on patient cost-sharing. An HSA basically provides health insurance along with a

Besides the health care has strong externality influences than that of other goods and services. The cost of caring a sick person may entail heavy financial burden on the patient's family. In the real world markets for other goods and services tends to approach towards market perfection that assumes a strict set of conditions such as, perfect information, several sellers and buyers, a uniform type of product and freedom to