Centre for Healthcare Economics, Analytics, and Literacy (HEAL)
HEAL’s mission is to improve public literacy regarding healthcare economics and public policy in Canada. HEAL is funded by independent research grants from charitable foundations. HEAL research is aligned with the following principles:
- Healthcare spending is an investment in human capital, producing greater societal benefits than many alternative uses of scarce resources.
- Development and adoption of innovative technologies is vital to increasing healthcare productivity and efficient maximization of net health benefits for patients.
- Fiduciary responsibilities and the scarcity of resources require policymakers to prioritize patient health outcomes and fiscal sustainability for taxpayers, and to consider the opportunity cost of allocations from public healthcare budgets.
- Public intervention in healthcare requires evidence that government can succeed where markets have failed. The merits of public versus private funding/production of medical goods, services and insurance can be evaluated through empirical observation.
- People have a fundamental right to protect and improve their health. Policies that hinder people from privately obtaining medical goods, services, and insurance are contrary to self-preservation.
LEAD RESEARCHER: [vacant]
CHPI is currently recruiting for this position.
HEAL research topics:
Health system performance, sustainability of government expenditure on healthcare, governments and markets in healthcare, economic principles of medical insurance design, economics of medical innovation, economic burden of illness, healthcare productivity dilemma, economic value of healthcare, social determinants of health, public policies affecting prices, supply and demand regarding health professionals and medical goods and services, opportunity cost of competing uses of public health care resources, economic incentives, competition, the profit motive, etc.