Health Economics

KEY PEOPLE

PROGRAM DESCRIPTION

Health care is a major domestic policy issue. National health care expenditures reached $2.6 trillion in 2010, consuming 17.6 percent of gross domestic product. This growth in expenditures is likely to accelerate as the population ages and as scientific progress introduces more effective, but more expensive, procedures.

The Health Economics Program’s mission is to study the ways in which economic incentives and government policies influence the quality and costs of health care. The program’s guiding philosophy is that society can deliver high-quality medical care while controlling expenditures. Health care providers, patients and others must be offered incentives to balance costs against benefits to ensure that resources are not wasted. No other health policy research center focuses on the effects of incentives embodied in institutional arrangements.

Vivian Ho, the James A. Baker III Institute Chair in Health Economics, has been the principal investigator on grants supported by the National Institutes of Health, the American Cancer Society and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. She is studying the effects of market competition and regulation on patient mortality rates, hospital costs and the prices that patients and insurers face for cancer surgery and cardiac care. The program aims to communicate its research results to health industry practitioners and policymakers through a biennial conference on health care reform, which will emphasize dialogue between physicians, health care executives, policymakers and researchers. Findings are being disseminated through public policy journals, clinical and social science journals, and international academic conferences. Another aim is to increase the available supply of researchers in the health policy field through the training of Baker Institute interns, undergraduate and graduate students at Rice University, and clinicians interested in health policy at the Texas Medical Center.

PUBLICATIONS
2011: The Aging of Biomedical Research in the United States
Dec 26 2011

Kirstin R.W. Matthews, Kara Calhoun, Vivian Ho, Nathan Lo; Houston, we have a solution
Dec 25 2011

Elena M. Marks; Health Economics Newsletter - December 2011
Dec 06 2011

Vivian Ho; Health Economics Newsletter - September 2011
Sep 13 2011

Elena M. Marks; Houston can lead in biotech
Jul 03 2011

John Mendelsohn; Health Economics Newsletter - June 2011
Jun 24 2011

Vivian Ho; Baker Institute Policy Report 47: The Role of Health Information Technology in Health Care Delivery Systems with High Quality-to-Cost Ratios
Apr 30 2011

Vivian Ho, Elena M. Marks, Noel Pugh; Health Economics Newsletter - March 2011
Mar 15 2011

Vivian Ho; Efforts to control obesity have benefits -- and costs
Feb 24 2011

Michael Grossman, Naci Mocan; Baker Institute Policy Report 46: The Obesity Epidemic: Causes and Current Policy Perspectives
Feb 08 2011

Vivian Ho, Michael Grossman, Naci Mocan
2010: Health Economics Newsletter - December 2010
Dec 07 2010

Vivian Ho; Health Economics Newsletter - September 2010
Sep 15 2010

Vivian Ho; Health Economics Newsletter - June 2010
May 20 2010

Vivian Ho; Health Economics Newsletter - March 2010
Mar 16 2010

Vivian Ho; A Realistic, Pragmatic Approach to Health Care Reform
Jan 31 2010

Vivian Ho

EVENTS

Document Actions

Health Economics