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Health Economics

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PROGRAM DESCRIPTION

Health care is a major domestic policy issue. National health care expenditures reached $2.3 trillion in 2008, consuming 16.2 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
2010
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
2009
Health Economics Newsletter - December 2009
Dec 16 2009
Vivian Ho
Health Economics Newsletter - September 2009
Sep 14 2009
Vivian Ho
Throwing More Dollars at a Broken Health Care System
Jul 20 2009
Vivian Ho
Health Economics Newsletter – June 2009
Jun 29 2009
Vivian Ho
Insuring All Children Now Will Save Money in the Future
Jun 18 2009
Vivian Ho
Baker Institute Policy Report 40: The Economic Impact of Uninsured Children on America
Jun 08 2009
Vivian Ho, Marah Short
Certificate of Need for Cardiac Care: Controversy over the Contributions of CON
Apr 01 2009
Vivian Ho, Meei-Hsiang Ku-Goto, James Jollis
Health Economics Newsletter - March 2009
Mar 31 2009
Vivian Ho
2008
The U.S. Health Cost Crisis: Recommendations for the Next Administration
Dec 19 2008
Vivian Ho
Health Economics Newsletter - December 2008
Nov 20 2008
Vivian Ho
Health Economics Newsletter - September 2008
Sep 23 2008
Vivian Ho
Certificate of Need Regulations and the Availability and Use of Cancer Resections
Jul 01 2008
Marah Short, Vivian Ho, Thomas A. Aloia
EVENTS