"Health Economics and Financing is a primer for the economic analysis of medical markets. Its intended audiences are students of medicine, public health, policy, and administration who wish to engage the central economic issues of their field without prolonged preparatory work; beginning...

Most causes and correlates of short-run (1 to 3 year) fluctuations in health care costs and insurance premiums are unrelated to long term trend or “drift,” and thus pose quite different problems with regard to accuracy and bias. Short-run variation is dominated by lagged inflation, wage...