Deck 19: Healthcare Economics and Policy

Question 1

Which of the following are being experienced by U.S. physicians due to the primarily profit-driven healthcare system?

A) Higher-quality health care
B) Increased autonomy
C) Increased reimbursements
D) Lower job satisfaction
E) Greater patient loads

Answer 1

A, B, D

Question 2

As Grossman posits, on a micro level, __________________ is one way of modifying the incidence and effect of ill health and disease as it interacts with other determinants of health production.

Answer 2

health care

Question 3

From the consumer's viewpoint, which of the following is to get the most total satisfaction or value from the least amount of money spent given the prices of the goods or services faced and the income level of the consumer?

A) Profit maximization
B) Resource maximization
C) Utility maximization
D) Product maximization

Answer 3

C

Question 4

Because public goods are jointly consumed, which of the following is obtained by summing the private marginal benefits across all individuals?

A) Social marginal benefit
B) Social marginal costs
C) Private marginal costs
D) External benefits of consumption

Question 5

_____________________ requires that the level of provision of a public good occurs where the social marginal benefit equals the social marginal costs.

Question 6

Which of the following must be present for a firm to maintain its market power for an extended period of time?

A) Perfect competition
B) Barriers to entry
C) Supply and demand
D) Profit maximization

Question 7

Government regulators have responded to the apparent change in the effects of concentration on hospital markets and now tend to see competition as beneficial.

Question 8

While the goal of government regulation is to protect privacy, regulations are lagging behind which of the following?

A) Cloud computing
B) Telemedicine
C) Health information technology
D) Electronic health records

Question 9

Which of the following is the key means in which people express their demand for health, which may involve the purchase of goods or services, thereby indirectly purchasing health improvements?

A) Health quality
B) Health production
C) Health prevention
D) Health promotion

Question 10

In the investment model view, which of the following is conditional on both the cost of health capital and the rate of depreciation of health stock?

A) Quality of health
B) Supply of health
C) Production of health
D) Demand for health

Question 11

Because one's productivity in the workplace is likely to be affected by one's health, investment in health could increase earnings to the extent that one might spend money on health care without reducing his or her consumption of other goods.

Question 12

Which of the following results from a process in which the individual can only influence the probability of transitions from one health state to another?

A) Health equity
B) Health promotion
C) Health status
D) Health disparities

Question 13

Production functions are always constructed assuming a particular__________________.

Question 14

Insurance coverage has been shown to diminish the importance of time in the decision about how much medical care to seek and which providers to use.

Question 15

With which of the following are patients able to choose freely because there are no gatekeepers restricting the choices, but there is a clear financial incentive to stay within the network?

A) Point of service plans
B) Health maintenance organizations
C) Preferred provider organizations
D) Accountable care organizations

Question 16

Which of the following is one of the solutions proposed by the Affordable Care Act to address the gaps in quality and unrestrained costs of the U.S. healthcare delivery system as seen through the Medicare fee-for-service system?

A) Point of service plans
B) Patient-centered medical homes
C) Preferred provider organizations
D) Accountable care organizations

Question 17

What type of private insurance increases the subscriber's choice of provider and improves access to services financially or through an increased approved network of providers?

A) Substitutive
B) Complementary
C) Supplementary
D) Exclusive

Question 18

Which of the following are difficulties faced by the disenfranchised in the current healthcare system?

A) Lower quality of care
B) Travel time
C) Flexibility in making appointments
D) Self-control
E) Financial access to health care

Question 19

________________________ is more than income, wealth, or educational attainment; it is access to opportunities over the life course.

Question 20

The racial and ethnic differences in obesity prevalence occur after controlling for which of the following?

A) Age
B) Gender
C) Educational attainment
D) Family income

Question 21

The theory of the firm is most closely associated with the _____________ side of the market.

Question 22

Good weather increases quantity supplied at every price, causing a rightward shift in the supply curve.

Question 23

As the time period lengthens, the flexibility of the firm to change production__________________ because inputs can change intensity or quantity.

Question 24

According to Santerre and Neun, what are the two initial inputs that exist for a short-run production?

A) Labor hours
B) Opportunity costs
C) Composite capital good
D) Indirect costs
E) Overhead costs

Question 25

The actual degree of substitutability between any two inputs depends on which of the following?

A) Educational considerations
B) Technical considerations
C) Legal considerations
D) Ethical considerations
E) Managerial considerations

Question 26

Which of the following would be exhibited if a doubling of output can be achieved without doubling all the inputs?

A) Decreasing returns to scale
B) Diseconomies of scale
C) Increasing returns to scale
D) Constant returns to scale

Question 27

Which of the following results from bureaucratic red tape, breakdown of top-to-bottom communication, and poor decisions being made when the firm gets too large and long-run average costs increase?

A) Decreasing returns to scale
B) Diseconomies of scale
C) Increasing returns to scale
D) Constant returns to scale

Question 28

What is the main reason why physicians believe they are not fairly compensated?

A) Increasing government control
B) Decreasing insurance reimbursement
C) Increasing cost of medical malpractice insurance
D) Incurring large debt in training

Question 29

Incorporating the __________________ into the analysis of the supply of physicians led to an approach that focused on returns over the lifetime in training rather than current earnings.

Question 30

If entry restrictions are coupled with rules prohibiting price competition, monopoly-level prices could result even when there are many suppliers of the same service.

Question 31

Which of the following subsidies for medical training have resulted in private costs of training that are much lower than the total costs to society?

A) Market incentives
B) Deferred-interest bearing loans
C) Subsidies to medical schools
D) Subsidies to teaching hospital
E) Higher insurance reimbursements

Question 32

The incentive to innovate would be reduced because which of the following makes research and development activity less profitable?

A) Duplication
B) Classification
C) Certification
D) Proliferation

Question 33

According to Grabowski, which of the following are the main reasons why the United States has been the world's leading nation in the commercialization of biotechnological knowledge?

A) Social insurance for all American citizens
B) Large stock of human capital and research institutions
C) Leniency on patent protection
D) Government support for research
E) Physicians and hospitals that are motivated to use the highest technology available
F)Historically generous third-party payers

Question 34

Which of the following suggests that the wave may break in the next decade for more use of electronic medical records in creating administrative efficiencies and increased quality of care?

A) Changes in clinicians' economics
B) Changes in government policies
C) Increased market incentives
D) Increased support for clinical computing
E) Regulations regarding privacy of protected health information

Question 35

What is the term of the following definintion.
-An innovation that increases the cost of treatment for a particular disease.

Question 36

What is the term of the following definintion.
-Protected by patents in order to promote innovation.

Question 37

What is the term of the following definintion.
-In empirical studies of healthcare costs, the amount that is left over as the unexplained variance after all known factors have been accounted for.

Question 38

What is the term of the following definintion.
-Compacts the quantities of inputs used to produce a given output.

Question 39

Which of the following is defined as the value of the resources used compared to the value of the resources saved or created?

A) Absolute cost
B) Absolute benefit
C) Absolute profit
D) Absolute price

Question 40

Which of the following identifies uncertain or controversial estimates in the study and presents an exposition of the ways in which different assumptions influence the study results?

A) Sensitivity analysis
B) Cost-development analysis
C) Cost-utility analysis
D) Cost-benefit analysis

Question 41

Reflecting the trade-offs involved, most health systems today are neither purely centralized nor decentralized but are mixed economies.

Question 42

Which type of health insurance is compulsory and funded by a combination of employer and individual contribution through nonprofit insurance funds, often regulated and subsidized by the state?

A) Consumer sovereignty model
B) Bismarck model
C) Beveridge model
D) Consumer-dependent model

Question 43

Cherry-picking and redlining of benefits in the private insurance industry, quantity setting behavior in the physician services industry, and medical arms race in the hospital industry are all the result of which of the following?

A) Utilization
B) Corruption
C) Competition
D) Benchmarking

Question 44

Which stage of the development and diffusion of medical technology is defined as "original investigation for the advancement of scientific knowledge without specific commercial objectives"?

A) Basic research
B) Applied research
C) Clinical investigation and testing
D) Diffusion

Question 45

In what stage of the development and diffusion of medical technology are new medical technologies evaluated for human subjects?

A) Basic research
B) Applied research
C) Clinical investigation and testing
D) Diffusion

Question 46

The study by Alwan and colleagues concluded that surveillance and interventions to reduce the incidence and prevalence of chronic disease was adequate in most countries.

Question 47

In what report was it determined that universal coverage is resource intense and requires efficient use of inputs because it needs to ensure that a core set of services is available to all in society?

A) Affordable Care Act
B) World Health Report 2010
C) Healthy People 2020
D) Social Security Act

Question 48

Regardless of the system, what basic features must be attained for a successful reform effort?

A) Effective leadership
B) Appropriate technology
C) Vertical integration
D) Adequate institutional support
E) Systems-level thinking

Question 49

The _____________________ was modeled on the Commonwealth Health Care Insurance Program, but several differences remain between the federal and state reforms that require interagency coordination and the creation of new information technology programs.

Question 50

Which of the following is authorized under the Affordable Care Act and coordinates the pilot projects that focus on the financial alignment of provider and payment incentives to provide accessible, high-value health care?

A) Green Mountain Care Board
B) Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act
C) State Innovation Models Initiative
D) Commonwealth Health Care Insurance Program

Question 51

During the Great Society from 1960 to 1965, reformers focused on the uninsured and the disenfranchised as the deserving population segments for healthcare programs.

Question 52

What is the term of the following definintion.
-The process of selling the same product at different prices to different buyers based on some characteristic of the buyer's in order to maximize profits and is based on differences in the costs of insuring different individuals.

Question 53

What is the term of the following definintion.
-Markets that have few dominant firms and many small firms with little market power.

Question 54

What is the term of the following definintion.
-Power of consumers to determine which goods and services are produced in a situation where demand determines the direction of technology development in health care.

Question 55

What is the term of the following definintion.
-Charges for each service received by the patient separately and provides an incentive for care providers to offer more treatments because payment is dependent on the quantity rather than on the quality.

Question 56

A lower deductible on an insurance policy is inefficient when its marginal cost is greater than the marginal benefit of additional coverage.

Question 57

U.S. health system reform efforts have attempted to correct which of the following issues?

A) Poor access
B) Competence of healthcare personnel
C) Higher costs of technologically driven care
D) Variable quality in the most advanced healthcare system in the world
E) Focus on prevention rather than treatment

Question 58

American healthcare surveys have found that the majority of consumers rate their health care as "excellent" or "very good." Those consumers who demonstrated poorer ratings tend to suffer from which of the following?

A) No health insurance
B) Incurable medical conditions
C) No regular healthcare providers
D) Unwillingness to seek medical care
E) No trust in the U.S. healthcare system

Question 59

A high level of satisfaction can be a double-edged sword in that increased consumer satisfaction with care is associated with which of the following?

A) Increased inpatient healthcare utilization
B) Increased mortality
C) Increased quality of healthcare
D) Increased access to care
E) Increased pharmaceutical expenditures

Question 60

Regardless of how population health is defined or measured, the concept is essential for determining and reducing health ____________.

Question 61

As concerns rise over the increasing size of the health economy relative to other sectors, as well as the relatively poor health of the population, _______________________ becomes an increasingly important tool in the study of factors that affect the health and health care of the American public.

Question 62

On both the population and individual perspectives, the health status of the U.S. population is excellent with decreasing incidence and prevalence of chronic disease across the life span and relatively low infant mortality rates.

Question 63

Health economists examine a wide range of issues, including which of the following?

A) Regulatory oversight of the healthcare sector
B) Nature and production of health
C) Demand for health care
D) Economic evaluation of policies and interventions
E) Competence of healthcare providers

Question 64

Which of the following are factors that determine the supply of health care?

A) Input markets
B) Health insurance
C) Prices of substitute services
D) Technology
E) Managerial effectiveness

Question 65

The implication of ______________________ is that the choices made are optimal for achieving the intended goals of the producer or consumer.

Question 66

What is the term of the following definintion.
-Established when demand and supply functions for health care intersect with one another.

Question 67

What is the term of the following definintion.
-The additional benefit received from consuming the next unit of the good or service.

Question 68

What is the term of the following definintion.
-Recognizes that choices are made incrementally and optimal decision making is based on the incremental benefits and the costs of an alternative.

Question 69

What is the term of the following definintion.
-Measures how well resources are being used to maximize the production of goods and services.

Question 70

Natural monopoly, oligopoly, externalities of production or consumption, public goods, and incomplete information are all sources of which of the following of the free market?

A) Market economy
B) Market failure
C) Market stability
D) Market predictability

Question 71

Which of the following is a crucial component of determining and ensuring efficiency in the market?

A) Opportunity costs
B) Marginal costs
C) Direct costs
D) Indirect costs

Question 72

Which of the following creates a barrier to entry in the marketplace where only certain types of firms may be able to compete in the market due to quality or infrastructure goals in the market?

A) Licensure
B) Imperfect information
C) Regulations for health and safety
D) Collusion

Question 73

Which of the following creates a barrier to entry because it reduces the number of providers in the market and decreases potential competition?

A) Licensure
B) Imperfect information
C) Regulations for health and safety
D) Collusion

Question 74

A perfectly competitive market allocates resources efficiently when all social costs and benefits are internalized by those engaged in the market in the form of marginal private benefit and marginal private cost.

Question 75

Which of the following measures the difference between the actual price received by the seller and the required price as reflected by the marginal private cost for each additional unit produced?

A) Consumer surplus
B) Producer surplus
C) Distributor surplus
D) Private surplus

Question 76

Which of the following serves as a rationing device, distributing goods and services to consumers who value them most, denoting the willingness to pay for the good or service in question?

A) Supply
B) Demand
C) Profits
D) Price

Question 77

The _____________________ states that every competitive equilibrium is Pareto efficient.

Question 78

The implication is that ___________________ goods tend to have large marginal external benefits, which makes them socially desirable but privately unprofitable to provide.

Question 79

Which of the following, produced by a monopoly, implies that the monopoly underproduces a product and therefore misaligns society's scarce resources?

A) Deadweight loss
B) Market failure
C) Consumer demand
D) Produce demand

Question 80

Exclusive control over an input or economies of scale can lead to barriers because the other firms will not have the resources to make the substitute product.