1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910786713203321

Autore

Hough Douglas E

Titolo

Irrationality in health care [[electronic resource] ] : what behavioral economics reveals about what we do and why / / Douglas E. Hough

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Stanford, Calif., : Stanford Economics and Finance, an imprint of Stanford University Press, 2013

ISBN

0-8047-8574-0

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (312 p.)

Disciplina

338.4/73621

Soggetti

Medical economics - United States

Medical care - United States

Health behavior - United States

Economics - Psychological aspects

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

What is behavioral economics--and why should we care? -- Keeping what we have, even if we don't like it -- Managing expectations and behavior -- Understanding the stubbornly inconsistent patient -- Understanding the stubbornly inconsistent consumer -- Understanding the medical decision making process, or, Why a physician can make the same mistakes as a patient -- Explaining the cumulative impact of physicians' decisions -- Can we use the concepts of behavioral economics to transform health care?

Sommario/riassunto

The health care industry in the U.S. is peculiar. We spend close to 18% of our GDP on health care, yet other countries get better results—and we don't know why. To date, we still lack widely accepted answers to simple questions, such as "Would requiring everyone to buy health insurance make us better off?" Drawing on behavioral economics as an alternative to the standard tools of health economics, author Douglas E. Hough seeks to more clearly diagnose the ills of health care today. A behavioral perspective makes sense of key contradictions—from the seemingly irrational choices that we sometimes make as patients, to the incongruous behavior of physicians, to the morass of the long-lived debate surrounding reform. With the new health care law in effect, it is more important than ever that consumers, health care industry leaders,



and the policymakers who are governing change reckon with the power and sources of our behavior when it comes to health.