This course will acquaint students with how microeconomic principles are used in health care. Students will apply economic laws and theory to health care problems. These principles will be applied to the market for health insurance, the market for hospital care, the market for primary care practitioners and the market for other health care. The course will emphasize the theory of perfect competition, monopoly, oligopoly and monopolistic competition. It will apply these concepts to health care. Economic and regulatory responses to market breakdown will be explored. Additional topics will include dynamic adjustment in health care markets, the concept of externalities, quality issues and quality signals and the implications of the erosion of consumer sovereignty. Course concepts will also include optimization of resource use, production decisions, incentives, strategic interaction and economic distortions.