Contemporary Healthcare and the Economics of Patient Choice
Friday, June 18th, 2010
Patient choice is a permutation of the theory of microeconomics that relates medical service preferences to service demand curves. The link between personal preferences, use of medical services, and the demand curve is one of the most complex relations in economics. Implicitly, economists assume that anything purchased will be consumed, unless the purchase is for integration into production. Of course, most medical care expenditures are not made for production except for those made by medical businesses. Preferences are the desires by each individual for the use of medical services or goods and services.