Health Sciences 4400A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Canada Health Act, On The Heavens, Counterfactual Conditional
Document Summary
This aristotelian model is useful for thinking about health care funding: extremes are dangerous, but the exact balance between extreme. 6 pillars of health care: cost containment is the capacity of a system to control expenditure. This is frequently tied into discussions of "sustainability". Public systems are generally better at cost containment: demand-based forms of cost containment also exist: these include any mechanisms to discourage health consumers from using services ex. In this way, the poorer patients won"t spend the money and the market economics views this as efficient. But those people become sicker and use more expensive resources making it less efficient in the long run: the third pillar of a health care system is equity. To a large extent, whether equity is important at all in the provision of health care depends on the values of the jurisdiction responsible for delivering health care.