Deck 11: Health Care Production and Costs

Question 1

Production and sale of healthcare goods take place in a world of ________________ resources, and theories are needed to understand the operation and planning process of medical firms.

Answer 1

scarce

Question 2

What is the term of the following definintion.
-Identifies how various inputs can be combined and transformed into a final output.

Answer 2

Production function

Question 3

What is the term of the following definintion.
-Where total output at first increases at an expanding rate but after some point increases at a decreasing rate with respect to a greater quantity of a variable input, holding all other inputs constant.

Answer 3

Law of diminishing marginal returns

Question 4

What is the term of the following definintion.
-There is a possibility that too many labor inputs can lead to a reduction in the quantity of healthcare services due to inefficiencies in production.

Question 5

What is the term of the following definintion.
-Illustrates the rate at which one input substitutes for the other in the production process at the margin.

Question 6

What is the term of the following definintion.
-Easily identified because a recent market transaction is available to provide an accurate measure of costs or money spent for the goods or services acquired.

Question 7

What is the term of the following definintion.
-Reflects the opportunity costs of using any resources the medical firm owns

Question 8

What is the term of the following definintion.
-Quantity of labor inputs are multiplied by the wage.

Question 9

What is the term of the following definintion.
-Relates the quantity of output to the cost of production.

Question 10

There is a _________________ relationship between the short-run total cost function and the short-run total product curve.

Question 11

Which of the following are short-run circumstances that affect the position of the total cost curve?

A) Prices of fixed inputs
B) Quality of care
C) Patient case mix
D) Amounts of variable inputs

Question 12

Which of the following refers to the notion that average costs fall as a medical firm gets physically larger due to specialization of labor and capital?

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

Question 13

Which of the following results when an increase in all inputs results in a more-than-proportionate increase in output?

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

Question 14

The production function allows for the possibility that each level of output may be produced by several different combinations of the personnel and capital inputs.

Question 15

One important microeconomic principle from production theory is the law of short-run total variable costs.

Question 16

In general terms, the elasticity of substitution between any two variable inputs that are substitutable equals the percent change in input ratio divided by the percent change in the ratio of the inputs' marginal productivities, holding the level of output constant.