Health Economics and Financial Management: An Overview

Explore the concept of demand, its law, and elasticity, and examine factors shaping demand—price, income, substitutes, tastes, and expectations—along with types like derived, autonomous, joint, and market demand.

Explain the law of demand and its inverse relationship between price and quantity demanded, illustrated by the demand schedule and curve, including key assumptions and impact factors.

Explore exceptions to the law of demand, including necessities, goods used as a status symbol, high prices, expectations of future price changes, Giffen's paradox, emergencies, ignorance, and brand loyalty.

Explore elasticity of demand and how price, income, and cross elasticity shape demand. Learn the five price elasticity types: unitary, relatively elastic, relatively inelastic, perfectly elastic, and perfectly inelastic.

Explore how elasticity of demand guides price decisions and profit, and summarize nine factors affecting demand: nature, substitutes, income, uses, complements, habits, expenditure share, durability, and income distribution.

Explore variations and changes in demand, price effects, and cross elasticity of demand for substitutes and complements, and learn how elasticity guides pricing, revenue, and profit.

Explore the supply side in health economics with the law of supply and elasticity. Review factors affecting supply: price, production cost, substitutes, technology, natural factors, transportation, price expectations, and taxation.

Explore the assumptions behind the law of supply and its exceptions, including no changes in income or production costs and cases like agricultural, artistic, auction goods, and labor supply.

Explore elasticity of supply, including perfectly elastic, less elastic, and highly inelastic types, and how price changes affect quantity; examine determinants: nature of the commodity, time, production techniques, agricultural products.

Explore how individual supply schedules and curves show higher prices increase quantity supplied, with a short-run stock and production capacity driving the upward slope; analyze time-based supply effects.

Explores market economy and the contrast between perfect competition, with free entry and homogeneous products, and imperfect competition, where market knowledge and differentiation shape prices and outcomes.

Define monopoly as a single producer with no close substitutes, who sets price by controlling supply, and compare it with monopolistic competition where price meets marginal revenue equals marginal cost.

Learn how demand forecasting estimates future sales within a proposed marketing plan and assumed marketing environment, guiding production, pricing, finance, and inventory decisions in health economics.

Explore the importance of demand forecasting for business decisions and profits, and learn methods like surveys of buyers' intentions, Delphi, time series analysis, and judgmental approaches.

Leverage demand forecasting to guide management decisions on capacity and procurement. Support sales evaluation, financial estimates, avoid over and under production, and ensure quality controls and future demand.

Identify and apply five criteria for good demand forecasting: accuracy, simplicity, cost efficiency, availability, and timeliness, then use macro parameters such as national income and population growth.

Learn how health finance fuels development through allocation by union and state governments, mobilization of resources, and curtailment of wasteful expenditure, with plans translating into improved health services.

Mobilize health resources through user charges, employer liability, central government schemes, private sector roles, NGOs, and international aid, balancing affordability with essential inelastic demand.

Curtail wasteful expenditure by reforming health system organization, prioritizing primary and preventive care, and strengthening financial control to allocate resources efficiently and reduce costs.

Explores the essential requirements for an efficient health system in India, including priority in resource allocation, increased health expenditure, raised financial resources, co-pays, adequate payment systems, and skilled professionals.

Develop medical audit systems to ensure quality and compliance with accreditation norms, maximize cost-effective use of existing services, and strengthen health administration in India through skilled professionals and performance budgeting.

Explore the meaning and milestones of health insurance in India, including social schemes like Central Government Health Scheme, Employees State Insurance, Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana, private Mediclaim, and future prospects.

Trace the rise of health insurance premiums in India from 2000 to 2011 and explain essentials like prepayment, risk pooling, solidarity, horizontal and vertical equity, and cross-subsidy.

Understand how health insurance expands access and shields households from high medical costs, through insurer–provider–community interactions, while addressing adverse selection, cream skimming, and moral hazard.

Analyze health insurance types—private, social, and microinsurance—with focus on India's social health schemes, including government health scheme and Employees State Insurance Scheme, funded by payroll tax and offering allopathic benefits.

Provide cash and medical benefits to low-income workers in the formal sector through the Employees State Insurance Scheme (ESIS) managed by Esic since 1948.

Outlines the six Employee State Insurance scheme benefits, including sickness, maternity, disablement, dependent, funeral, and medical benefits, and highlights challenges like low awareness and poor rural penetration.

Compare universal health insurance scheme with Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY), highlighting RSBY's 30,000 rupee family cover, cashless services, OPD and inpatient coverage, smart cards, and shared funding.

Private health insurance offers voluntary mediclaim with risk-based premiums and customizable benefits. TPAs and brokers optimize cashless and reimbursement claims under IrDA regulation and ombudsman oversight.

Examine seven challenges in private health insurance, such as limited influence over delivery networks and mechanisms, high claim ratios, limited product development, funding and affordability, and pricing standardization.

Explore community health insurance in India, a not-for-profit scheme for the informal sector that pools health risks through collective, member-led management and highlights schemes like Yashaswini and Karuna Trust.

Community health insurance schemes like Yashaswini and Karuna Trust improve access and provide security for the poor, but quality of care remains low in rural areas and protection is partial.