20 Topics on Health Economics for a Presentation

Health economics is a branch of economics that deals with the issues related to the production and consumption of health and health care. It also goes on to study health-affecting behaviors such as smoking. As this is one of the very interesting topics around, your instructor may ask you to delve deeply into the topic. In this case, you may either have to write a report or a presentation. If you need to write the latter on this subject, feel free to go over our 10 facts on health economics for a presentation. However, if you are strapped for time, the following 20 topics may just be the right fix for you to begin creating a presentation right away.

1. The Need for Health Care vs. the Want for Health Care
2. The Contribution and Effects of the Country’s Healthсare Sector on its GDP
3. An Overview of the Resources Required to Deliver and Sustain Basic Health Care and Treatments
4. The Effects of Health Care Reforms and Policies on Private Organizations’ Profitability
5. Healthcare as a Basic Human Right: The Pros and Cons of Providing Free Healthcare
6. A Look at the Feasibility of a Universal Health Care System
7. An Objective Look at the Pros and Cons of a Free Health Care Market
8. Methods to Reduce the Risk of Adverse Selection
9. The Differences between Moral Hazard and Adverse Selection and their Effects on Health Economics
10. The Need to Educate Patients on the Costs Added to their Medical Bills
11. The Role of Medical Resources in Increasing Life Expectancy Numbers
12. Effective Solutions to Improve Infant Mortality Rates in the United States
13. The Role of Hospitals in Setting the Prices of Treatments
14. Reasons Patients Should Select Larger Medical Facilities to Avoid Costly Treatments
15. The Adverse Effects of an Unplanned Influx in Health Care on the Overall Economic Balance
16. The Role of a Stronger Health Care System and Nutrition Programs on the Throughput of the Employed Masses
17. Solutions to Reduce the Wastage of Health Care Treatments Due to Issues such as Negligence
18. A Framework to Ensure that Resources are Not Wasted on Low Quality Services
19. The Effects of Hospital Expansions, Mergers and Consolidation on Independent Practices
20. Quality of Service vs. Quantity: Choosing Patients and their Treatment over Profitability

You can use these topics as is or narrow them down further. If you need more guidance on preparing your presentation, visit our page on how to write a presentation about health economics for an outline and general tips. The following lines provide a quick sample for you to go through.

Sample Presentation: The Growth of Hospitals and its Effect on Individually Practicing Physicians

Hospitals are in a very unique position when it comes to health economics. All over the country, they are constantly expanding and cutting costs; and that has a direct effect on the overall health system. The consolidation of hospitals is also on the rise, a method achieved by buying various practices and merging with private entities. The people running these hospitals are driving up the costs of treatments themselves. In the process, however, the expansion has affected individually practicing physicians.

These expansions, which are clearly for profitability reasons, are justified as being an initiative to reduce waste and increase quality. The independent practices, unfortunately, are struggling with patient pressure and administration issues. Despite these, they are delivering quality services at lower prices. That is why private practices are considered a good choice for both patients and insurers. Unfortunately, the public is not aware of this.

A staggering amount of 105 hospitals merged in 2012 alone and this has doubled in the past five years. In the last decade, hospitals have exponentially gathered a plethora of physicians under their payroll. Between the years 2000 and 2010, hospitals have hired physicians 32% more than they normally do. The majority of these physicians were individual practitioners.

Hospitals have become a huge industry and they have people fooled by having them believe that their mergers and expansions have made the treatment costs lower. In most cases, the same treatment at a hospital can cost 200% more than at an independent practitioner. In a hospital, there are so many small bills patients receive for added facilities and additional services aside from the actual treatment.

So not only can hospital acquisition and mergers be a strain on the patient’s pockets, but also the insurance companies. Insurance companies are paying billions of dollars more to hospitals than a physician’s office.

This may be hidden from the masses, but these statistics are what hospitals are constantly worried about. Their argument is that the consolidation of hospitals will reduce the waste, protect the atmosphere, and keep the prices down due to the economy of scales. They believe that these mergers and expansions can incentivize the competition to cut costs. If, for example, two hospitals are in close proximity to a huge number of beds and they merge, they would reduce the cost by utilizing their resources, which in this case is the huge number of beds.

Also, health care insurance companies will also find it less costly to manage fewer hospitals than a huge number of them. These arguments by hospital owners are fake claims as the economy of scale is nowhere to be found and the quality of care, prices and costs are increasing every day.

Safe to say is that the expansion of hospitals will not be doing hospitals and/or insurance companies and good. The only parties benefiting are the people behind the hospital administrations. There should be awareness about this comparison between hospitals and individual physicians because people need to know that even if their insurance is covering their treatment costs, this negligence can tilt the scale of health economics and raise the costs of everything, including the amount a general patient pays to an insurance company.

You can definitely come up with a better topic and presentation. So, get ready to work hard on your upcoming PowerPoint presentation. Best of luck.

References:
Bhattacharya, J., Hyde, T., & Tu, P. (n.d.). Health Economics.
Gruber, J., & Newquist, H. P. (2011). Health care reform: What it is, why it’s necessary, how it works. New York: Hill and Wang.
Brill, S. (n.d.). America’s bitter pill: Money, politics, backroom deals, and the fight to fix our broken healthcare system.
Monopolizing medicine: Why hospital consolidation may increase healthcare costs. (n.d.). Retrieved April 22, 2016, from http://medicaleconomics.modernmedicine.com/medical-economics/content/tags/hospital-employment/monopolizing-medicine-why-hospital-consolidation-?page=full
Drummond, M., & Drummond, M. (2005). Methods for the economic evaluation of health care programmes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Is the US Population Behaving Healthier? (n.d.). Retrieved April 21, 2016, from http://www.nber.org/papers/w13013
Sloan, F. A., & Hsieh, C. (2012). Health economics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.