Health Care Markets and Competition Policy -- Antitrust Policy in the United States -- Patents and Monopoly Pricing of Pharmaceuticals -- Patents and Exclusionary Product Hopping -- Bundled Discounts and PeaceHealth -- Collusion in Health Care Markets -- Collusion in Generic Drug Markets -- The Hatch-Waxman Act, Patent Infringement Suits, and Reverse Payments -- The Alleged Insulin Conspiracy -- Licensing of Health Care Professionals -- Monopsony, Dominant Buyers, and Oligopsony -- Countervailing Power: Physician -- Group Purchasing Organizations, Monopsony, and Antitrust Policy -- Collusion in the Nurse Labor Market -- Collusion in the Oocyte Market -- No-Poaching Agreements and Antitrust Policy -- The Economics of Horizontal Mergers -- Horizontal Merger Policy -- The Economic Theory of Vertical Integration -- Vertical Merger Policy -- Concluding Remarks.
Summary:
"In Economics 101, we learn that competition and competitive markets provide the biggest bang for the buck. In a perfectly competitive world, scarce resources are allocated in the most efficient way; the goods and services that are valued most highly are produced in the right quantities and are priced appropriately. Perfectly competitive markets, therefore, maximize social welfare, which is the sum of consumer surplus and producer surplus. Market imperfections can impede the competitive process and introduce inefficiencies which, in time, can reduce the well-being of society. These imperfections include externalities, public goods, asymmetric information, and monopoly power. The public policy response to these market failures is to promote and preserve competition. Concerns over market imperfections are also present in the U.S. health care sector. Departures from competition can lead to poor quality care and cause losses in the hundreds of billions of dollars"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.