Demand for Healthcare Essay Example

The production of health is stimulated by the demand for health care. Demand for healthcare has gone no close substitute rather than promoting health and it must be fulfilled when illness arises. It is directly proportional to the demand for health. For example reduction in health care leads to the decrease in health status.

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Schooling plays a vital role in the production of health care, in that a well-educated person is more efficient in the production of healthcare since he has an awareness of the value of good nutrition and is also aware of the significance of disease prevention. Hence there is a decrease in the quantity of health care needed to produce a given stock of health.

The demand for healthcare increases with an increase with age. For instance, the aged are normally associated with so many diseases hence there is an increase in demand for inpatient services and pharmaceuticals. People usually need a long-term benefit for the health services, for example, some people may only seek medical attention when only needed since they have little knowledge about the health problem.

Asymmetry of information illustrates that the instability between demand and need may result in an inefficient outcome in health care production. The instability may include inefficient information, challenges of accessing better healthcare services e.g. health centers, doctors, and pharmaceuticals last but not least demand factors including income levels. Asymmetric information can be a source of advance selection and moral hazard.

There is doubt in distinctive healthcare market about the diagnoses, available treatment, and effectiveness. The consumers are the most affected as they lack the medical skills to make informed choices. They times choose to be ignorant when making decisions on the supply of health services due to, the cost of obtaining information may be too high for them to afford, if the likely benefits are too low, or there is difficulty in obtaining information.

The patient may decide to depute decision-making process on their health matters to the doctor, who in turn would make the decision based on the patient preference, i.e. the decision that could have made if they had the same information.

The role of schooling in health production

Schooling has significantly played a very important role in the health production process. Health production and status are so much correlated with the schooling process. The main theories explained the role of schooling towards achieving better health production are mainly explaining that better schooling and educated persons are mostly and more convenient both economically and are more producers of health. It also adds that schooling and health production are more correlated because they are both related in one way or the other. It is also noted that most people mainly with low discount rates will invest mostly in both education and health, which is of great importance to both the individual and the society.

References

Batinti, A. (2014). On Medical Progress and Health Care Demand: A Case Perspective Using the Grossman Model of Health Status. Health Economics, 24(12), pp.1632-1637.

Jankowski, P. and Brown, B. (2014). Health Care Accessibility Modeling: Effects of Change in Spatial Representation of Demand for Primary Health Care Services. Quaestiones Geographicae, 33(3).