Each session will be divided into three parts. Part one will consist of a roundtable discussion of the week’s readings and underlying issues, led by participants. Concepts to be covered include different normative organizing principles (efficiency/ effectiveness/ equality/ minimal distributive justice), the role of incentives in health care (including supply and demand/ price elasticity of demand and supply), adverse selection, moral hazard, discrimination, and the importance of social insurance pools. These concepts will be brought to bear on topics related to Medicaid (a program for the poor or middle class?), medical malpractice (helping or hurting patients?), social sources of health disparities, social networks in service delivery, and other critical issues.

Part two each week will include a guest speaker who is engaged in cutting edge research that relates to health policy and vulnerable populations. These speakers will discuss their research and the policy implications of this work for the health policy reform debate in which the U.S. is currently engaged. Each session will end with a broader discussion of the current health policy debate, with updates on the progress of reform (be it legislative or implementation of a new system), with a focus on vulnerable populations.

This will be an intensive mini-course. Participants must commit to reading assigned articles and taking the lead in presenting a few of them. Further, some students will be assigned to track the health reform debate progress each week, so discussions are based on the most up-to-date information. Written assignments will include 2 short reflection pieces (2-3 pages, double spaced) based on the readings or guest lectures in which students outlines their thoughts on an issue covered in the mini-course.

Mini-Course Objectives
• Understand key concepts and issues that relate to health policy
• Apply this knowledge to issues that affect vulnerable populations
• Apply this knowledge to the current national health care policy reform effort

Mini-Course Readings

Cutler, D.M. (2002). Equality, efficiency, and market fundamentals: The dynamics of
International medical care reform,” Journal of economic literature, 40(3), 881-906.

Grogan, C.M. (2008). Medicaid: Health care for you and me. In J.A. Morone, T.J. Litman & L.S. Robins (Eds.) Health politics and policy 4th edition, pp. 329-354. Clifton Park, NY: Delmar Cengage Learning.

Kenney, G. & Yee, J. (2007). SCHIP at a crossroads: Experiences to date and challenges ahead. Health affairs, 26(2), 356-69.

Lane, J. & Gohmann, S. (1995). Shortage or surplus: Economic and noneconomic approaches to the analysis of nursing labor markets. Southern economic journal, 61(3), 644-53.

Lantz, P.M., Lichtenstein, R.L. & Pollack, H.A. (2007). Health policy approaches to population health: The limits of ‘medicalization’. Health affairs, 26(5), 1253-57.

Meltzer, D., Manning, W.G., Morrison, J., Shah, M.N., Jin, L., Guth, T. (2002). Effects of physician experience on costs and outcomes on an academic general medicine service: Results of a trial of hospitalists. Annals of internal medicine, 137, 866-74.

Rand Health Research Highlights. The Health Insurance Experiment. www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9174/index1.html.

Rosenthal, M.B. & Dudley, R.A. (2007). Pay-for-performance: Will the latest payment trends improve care? Journal of the American Medical Association, 297(7), 740-744.

Shaefer, H. L. and Sammons, E.D. (2009). The development of an unequal social safety net: A case study of the employer-based health insurance (non) system. Journal of sociology and social welfare, 36(3), 177-97.

Studdert, D.M. Mello, M.M. & Brennan, T.A. Medical malpractice. New England journal of medicine, 350(3), 283-292.

Wang, P.S. Ulbricht, C.M. & Schoenbaum, M. (2009). Improving mental health treatments through comparative effectiveness research. Health affairs, 28(3), 783-791.

Williams D.R. & Jackson, P.B. (2005). Social sources of racial disparities in health. Health