Health economists may be getting the supply-and-demand framework all wrong

<p>Have health economists been underestimating supply-side constraints when making predictions regarding cost and utilization for universal health coverage programs, such as Medicare For All? That's certainly what Dr. Adam Gaffney, a pulmonary specialist from Cambridge Health Alliance and Harvard Medical School, and colleagues posit in a <a href="https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2020.01715">new policy paper published in the January 2021 issue of <em>Health Affairs</em></a><em>.</em></p><p>As Gaffney and co-authors note in their paper, "focusing only on the impact of health care reform on government expenditures is short-sighted." On the supply side, there's a natural limit to doctor and nurses' time as well as the number of hospital beds in a given facility.</p><p>Their analysis suggest that while first-dollar universal coverage expansion would increase ambulatory visits by about 7-10% and hospital use by about 0-3%, modest administrative savings could offset the costs of these increases.</p><p>On this episode of <em>A Health Podyssey</em>, Alan Weil and Adam Gaffney take listeners through health reform economics 101 before sharing the implications of the paper, ultimately questioning whether health reform is too focused on a demand-side framework.</p><p>Subscribe: <a href="https://feeds.transistor.fm/a-health-podyssey">RSS</a> | <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-health-podyssey/id1533852530">Apple Podcasts</a> | <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy50cmFuc2lzdG9yLmZtL2EtaGVhbHRoLXBvZHlzc2V5">Google Podcasts</a> | <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/3tAEbXdlzlcgjLTHfJMYqR">Spotify</a> | <a href="https://castro.fm/itunes/1533852530">Castro</a> | <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=576615&amp;refid=stpr">Stitcher</a></p>