Health care is unique in its economics, but regardless of how it’s defined, an emerging market is clear: consumerism and information seeking, Saurabh Jha, MBBS, assistant professor of radiology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, said at ACR 2016.
The ability to define the health care market is already fraught with challenges and increasingly complex. Kenneth Arrow, the king of health care economics according to Jha, identified several factors differentiating health care from other markets: uncertainty in demand and quality, expected behavior of the physician, barrier to entry, and erratic pricing practices.
Most important to health care’s complexity, Jha said, are uncertainty and the notion of asymmetric information, which has been described by the economist George Akerlof.
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