Exam 1: Choices: Money, Medicine, and Health

Socioeconomic differences in mortality found in the U.S. are most likely attributable to lack of universal health insurance coverage.

The hospital opens a cancer center in an adjacent abandoned building. Since it was an abandoned building, there are no opportunity costs of this decision.

What do economists mean by scarcity? What is a major resource that is scarce for a full-time student who also works night shifts to pay for her education?

Government regulations and professional licensing of health care providers is a response to the nature of human response to illness and pain. Examples include all the following except

When a money price cannot be assigned to a health care action such as a choice an individual makes to exercise to maintain a healthy cardiovascular system, economists use the concept of opportunity cost which values the action

Which of the following statements is false? Significant increase in healthcare spending over the past seventy years can in part be explained by the

To reduce the ache in your knees when you work out, you buy an elastic knee brace from the pharmacy section at the grocery store. This transaction differs from paying a surgeon to replace your knee joint because

The Flow of Funds idea emphasizes that total dollars spent by individuals, government and other third party payers for health care must equal total income earned by health care providers, administrators and other health care workers.

The university bans use of perfumes and colognes in any office, dorm room, classroom, or other public building on campus. What is the public good that is impacted? What is the cost? What is the benefit?

U.S. health spending per capita in 2012 was

Over the past 100 years, out of pocket expenditures for health care services by individuals have decreased from about 50% to less than 10%.

Dr. Getzen differentiates choices people make concerning lifestyle, risk modification measures and illness treatments. Why do health economists seem to concentrate on measuring the illness treatments rather than lifestyle choices?

Buying a hip replacement surgery is different from the assumptions of a purchase in the perfectly competitive market because

Scarcity means

The healthcare sector currently comprises more than one sixth (18%) of the entire economy; it is big and growing. The opportunity cost of this growth includes all of the following except

Investments in human capital include all the following except

As access to high-quality care has been steadily improving across the world, inequalities in health can still be found only in relatively poor countries.

According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, more than a quarter of the Medicare budget goes to paying for medical care incurred during the enrollees' last year of life. What is the opportunity cost of those billions of dollars? Is it relatively low or high? What could be possible alternative uses of that money? List at least a few alternative options and discuss the associated tradeoffs.

Firms apply marginal analysis to maximize the following production goal:

Which of the following statements about the concept of "rationality" is false?