Health Care Economics

John B. Davis is Professor of Economics at Marquette University, USA, and Professor of Economics at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He is co-editor of the Journal of Economic Methodology. He is author of Individuals and Identity in Economics (2011), The Theory of the Individual in Economics (2003), and Keynes’s Philosophical Development (1994).Robert McMaster is Professor of Political Economy in the Adam Smith Business School at the University of Glasgow, UK. He was a co-editor of the Review of Social Economy from 2005 to 2016. He has published numerous academic articles and is a co-editor of the four-volume Social Economics collection in the Routledge series on Critical Concepts in Economics.

‘At least in developed economies, the amount of resources devoted to health care is massive and growing. John B. Davis and Robert McMaster argue further that health care poses a major challenge to standard assumptions in mainstream economic analysis. They emphasise that the individual does not stand alone, and is embedded in a web of social relations, invoking varied and complex motivations. The impact of this challenging and well-argued book should spread well beyond health care economics alone.’ — Geoffrey M Hodgson, Research Professor in Business Studies, University of Hertfordshire, UK

• List of illustrationsForewordPreface and acknowledgementsChapter 1 – Health care economics1.1 Introduction: mainstream ‘health’ care economics?1.2 The microeconomics of health care markets: principal–agent theory, moral hazard, and care1.3 Care as a market externality: caring externalities1.4 The problematic nature of caring externalities1.5 Care and the socially embedded individual1.6 An alternative health economics1.7 Outline of the argument of the bookPart I – Health care notions: health economics and the biomedical approachChapter 2 – Health care, medical care, and the biomedical bpproach2.1 Introduction: health care and medical care2.2 Medical care: the biomedical approach2.3 Health economics and the biomedical approach2.4 The biomedical approach to medical care: issues and concerns2.5 Delineating medical care and health careChapter 3 – On identifying and categorizing health and medical care3.1 Introduction3.2 The array and types of health care3.3 Delivery levels of medical care3.4 Medical (and health) care as distinctive measures3.5 Some concluding thoughtsPart II – Theories of care: towards health and medical careChapter 4 – Economics and care4.1 Introduction4.2 Care in "early" economic thought4.3 Kenneth Boulding: health economist?4.4 Gavin Mooney on health care: from community ties to participation to reciprocity4.5 Caring labor as a characteristic human activity: feminist economicsChapter 5 – Capturing care5.1 Introduction5.2 An overarching definition of care?5.3 Care of the self5.4 The aims of care5.5 Phases and types of care5.6 Some final thoughtsPart III – Care systems, human flourishing, and policyChapter 6 – Institutions, groups, and the morality of care6.1 Introduction6.2 Institutions and institutional economics6.3 Health and medical care institutions: medical pluralism and the three sectors of health care6.4 Moral groups of care6.5 Medical groups of careChapter 7 – Developing capabilities and the dignity of the individual7.1 Introduction7.2 Health capabilities and their social embeddeness in care relationships7.3 The values of socially embedded health capabilities7.4 The nature of the person as a focus of care in socially embedded care relationshipsChapter 8 – Social values in health care systems8.1 Introduction8.2 Public health and the social causes of inequalities in health8.3 Public health and health capability improvement8.4 The normative objectives of health care systems8.5 The institutional and normative foundations of health careChapter 9 –Towards dignity in comprehensive health caring9.1 The polarity in conceptions of care9.2 The importance of dignity9.3 Health policy for today and the future9.4 Whither economics?Index