Research

Health Care Financing, Health Insurance, and Health Labor Markets

Globalization is a force shaping societies and economies for decades to come. This is as true of the health care sector as it is of other sectors. International reforms of health care systems over the last decade have addressed three fundamental issues: coverage, cost, and control. The general approach has been to move the health care systems toward the use of markets or quasi markets and to decentralize as much as political and social structures will allow. The GCHEPR studies this trend with particular attention to reforms on health care financing and delivery systems, to the availability of health insurance, and to trends and transformations in the health care labor market.

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Health and Social Capital

Social capital is a concept that has been evolving over the last three decades. Social capital has two distinct levels which are generally agreed upon. One is individual social capital (ISC), which refers to trust or social support relationships that the individual has with others in the community. The second is community social capital (CSC), which is measured economically by the number of community or neighborhood organizations available to individuals. Such organizations can include churches or synagogues, social clubs, fraternal groups, amateur and youth sports leagues, unions, civic associations, etc.

  • Social Capital Global Network Workshop, University of California at Berkeley

    This GCHEPR-sponsored workshop on October 26-28, 2006 features research presentations on the demand for various aspects of social capital and health-related variables. Specific topics included are:
    • Overview of Social Capital Research - Richard Scheffler; University of California at Berkeley
    • The Demand for Social Interactions - Henry Saffer, Kean University
    • The Demand for Religious Activity and Religious Social Capital: An Application of the Grossman Model - Timothy Brown, University of California at Berkeley
    • Health Behaviors and Risk Equilibria - Sherman Folland, Oakland University
    • The Impact of Individual and Community Social Capital on Self-Assessed Health in Norwegian Level of Living Surveys - Tor Iverson, University of Oslo
    • Psychosocial Resources and Health Inequalities in France - Michel Grignon, McMaster University
    • Social Capital and Health in Canada - Audrey LaPorte, University of Toronto
    • Social Capital and Health in England - Franco Sassi, London School of Economics and Political Science
    • Social Capital and Health in Eight CIS Countries - Lorenzo Rocco, University of Padova

  • Social Capital and Health

    2005 IHEA1 pre-Congress session Barcelona, Spain (July 10-13, 2005)
    A training session/educational program that covered the state of the art in studying social capital and health, including data sources and issues, measurement of social capital, and econometric considerations. Featured: Richard M. Scheffler, PhD, Timothy T. Brown, PhD, and Kamrul Islam, MS.

  • Community Social Capital papers

    The 6th ECHE2 Budapest, Hungary (July 3-6, 2006)
    • The Empirical Relationship between Community Social Capital and the Demand for Cigarettes by Timothy T. Brown, PhD
    • The Role of Community Social Capital in Reducing the Prevalence of Serious Mental Illness by Richard M. Scheffler, PhD

  • GCHEPR Social Capital Working Group

    • Eric Nauenberg (Canada) Associate Professor of Health Economics at the University of Toronto Research interests: developing models of decision-making in single-payer health care systems, the trade-off between cost-effectiveness and budget impact, and the social determinants of health.
    • Audrey Laporte (Canada) Assistant Professor of Health Economics at the University of Toronto Research interests: socio-economic determinants of health, modeling of health human resource labor markets, and the relationship between profit status of health care institutions, efficiency, and quality of care.
    • Franco Sassi (England) Senior Lecturer on Health Policy at LSE3 Research interests: the economic analysis of health services, the use of measures of equity in economic analysis, and the use of multi-attribute utility assessment techniques for measuring health outcomes.
    • Tor Iversen (Norway) Professor of Health Economics at the University of Oslo Research interests: the role of economic incentives in health care.

    Participating Countries:

    • Australia
    • Canada
    • England
    • India
    • Indonesia
    • Israel
    • Japan
    • Netherlands
    • Norway
    • Peru
    • Scandinavia
    • Singapore
    • South Africa
    • Spain
    • Thailand
    • Uganda

  • Papers

    Recently Published

1 International Health Economics Association

2 European Conference on Health Economics

3 London School of Economics and Political Science

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Mental Health Care

The global significance of mental health has recently been receiving increased recognition. "More than 150 million people suffer from depression at any point in time and about 25 million people suffer from schizophrenia." The economic burden of mental illness is substantial. In the US, direct treatment costs were estimated to account for 2.5% of the gross national product. Estimates of indirect costs for mental illness are two to six times the direct costs in developed market economies and are likely to account for an even greater proportion of treatment costs in developing countries where direct treatment costs tend to be low.

The World Health Organization Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse notes that mental illness is among the most important contributors to the global burden of disease and disability. "Neuropsychiatric conditions account for 13% of the total Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) lost due to all diseases and injury and are estimated to increase to 15% by the year 2020. Five of the 10 leading causes of disability and premature death are mental disorders." (Prevention of mental disorders, 2004) In the former communists countries in Central and Eastern Europe, the neuropsychiatric disorders represent an even higher burden of disease, with 17.2% of DALYs attributable to mental illness. (Jenkins R, Klein J, Parker C, 2006)

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The Global Market For ADHD Medications

We study the international market, utilization, and costs for psychostimulants, as well as country variations in the diagnosis of ADHD due to physician practice styles. ADHD is a commonly diagnosed behavioral disorder in children. Use of psychostimulants varies considerably. We employ various models to test hypotheses regarding the effect of social, economic, demographic, regulatory, health system, and other educational variables on the supply and demand for psychostimulants. We want to know which factors affect the supply and demand for these drugs, how they determine the consumption rates, and which ones are relatively more influential. We also compute the price and income elasticity of demand for the drugs.

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