Reference no: EM133761808

Discussion Post: Current Economic Healthcare

One of the major assumptions in an efficient marketplace is that people have equal information concerning an item that they wish to purchase. We wish to know the quality of an item before buying it and certainly the price we will pay. Hidden factors such as annual license fees or hidden taxes not stated in the advertisement give one party an advantage over the other. For example, when you sign up for cable TV, the price quoted does not often include a near doubling of the final cost due to taxes and fees added after the sale. In healthcare, such items as quality of an implant and expected life are not something that the average patient is aware of, and he or she is then unaware that the price may differ on the basis of these factors. Stainless steel hip joints may be less expensive than titanium ones but may not last as long, for example. Information asymmetry is common in healthcare as you, as a patient, are perhaps dealing with someone with decades of training in a field you are not knowledgeable about. This may make the market assumption invalid.

Task:

One of the major assumptions in the free-market model is that consumers and providers have all the information that is needed to make decisions on purchases:

1) Discuss areas of information that a prospective patient might need concerning a surgical procedure at a surgical center.
2) Discuss whether that information is available.
3) Discuss how that information might be made available.