Health Economics and Financing

Thomas E. Getzen is Professor of Risk, Insurance and Health Management at Temple University and the founder and Executive Director of i HEA, the International Health Economics Association. After receiving an undergraduate degree in literature from Yale University, he worked for the U.S.P.H.S. Centers for Disease Control Venereal Disease program in New York and Los Angeles, and then obtained an MHA degree in Medical Care Organization and Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Washington. Dr. Getzen's main research contributions have been in the areas of contracting, price indexes and forecasting of health care spending. His consulting work has included employee benefit negotiations, projections of health care cost trends and premiums, laboratory diagnostics, risk assessment, and capital financing for managed care. Dr. Getzen has been a visiting professor at the University of Toronto, the Center for Health and Wellbeing of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of York (UK). He has served on the boards of Covenant House, a local community health center in northwest Philadelphia, MSI, a venture-capital financed managed behavioral health care corporation, and CHE, a multi-institutional health provider system with over 60 hospitals and nursing homes. Dr. Getzen has written more than 80 papers in the field and serves on the editorial board of the journal Health Economics .

Preface. Acknowledgments. About the Author. Foreword. 1 Choices: Money, Medicine, and Health. 2 Demand and Supply. 3 Cost-Benefit and Cost-Effectiveness Analysis. 4 Health Insurance: Financing Medical Care. 5 Insurance Contracts and Managed Care. 6 Physicians. 7 Medical Education, Organization, and Business Practices. 8 Hospitals. 9 Management and Regulation of Hospital Costs. 10 Long-Term Care. 11 Pharmaceuticals. 12 Capital Financing and Ownership of Health Care Providers. 13 Macroeconomics of Medical Care. 14 The Role of Government. 15 Public Goods and Public Health. 16 History, Demography, and the Growth of Modern Medicine. 17 International Comparisons of Health and Health Expenditures. 18 Value for Money in the Future of Health Care. Glossary. Index.