The Initiative on Enabling Choice and Competition in Healthcare

The dominant theory in economics for centuries in the Western world has been the free market system, yet the ability of competitive markets to provide quality care has been a central point of recent debate. Extensive government regulation, though well-intentioned, adversely affects the overall health of Americans, inhibits medical innovation, and demands enormous tax-payer investment. The Initiative on Enabling Choice and Competition in Healthcare delivers cutting edge research on the efficiencies of competitiveness in the healthcare sector to demonstrate that free market forces can and do work to provide innovative, equitable, and high-quality care.

Our Vision

To be the leading university-based research center in free-market healthcare, promoting choice and competition to ensure greater access to existing care and new innovations.

Our Mission

To conduct evidence-based research and analyses on market-based choice and competition in the healthcare sector to lead to better-informed policy recommendations.

Working Papers

COVID-19 Biopharmaceutical Innovation and Industry Appropriation

by sfrazee | Apr 25, 2024 | White Papers

The rapid emergence of vaccines and therapeutics in response to the onset of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic demonstrated the value of medical innovation. These advances not only led to enhanced patient welfare by reducing the disease’s mortality and morbidity but...

Policy Brief: The Impact of Price Setting at 9 Years on Small Molecule Innovation Under the Inflation Reduction Act

by cmicklin | Feb 15, 2024 | White Papers

This policy brief provides a quantitative analysis of how the Inflation Reduction Act’s (IRA) policy to set prices for select small molecule drugs 9 years after FDA approval impacts innovation and patient health. Price setting under the IRA undermines existing...

Difference-in-Differences in the Marketplace

by susuguo | Feb 1, 2024 | White Papers

Price theory says that the most important effects of policy and technological change are often found beyond their first point of contact. This appears opposed to econometric methods that rule out spillovers of one person’s treatment on another’s outcomes. This paper...

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How Chicago Economics is Helping End a Pandemic: Enabling Choice and Competition in Healthcare

Operation Warp Speed is a historic milestone for economic research on medical innovation that occurred over decades on the University of Chicago campus. Chicago’s research results, traditions, and emphasis were brought to the federal government in 2017 by several of its faculty and alumni. In the three years before COVID-19 came to the United States, that economic team showed the President of the United States how federal policy reforms were delivering real value to consumers by encouraging innovation in healthcare industries.

Read the full paper here.

Learn more about Operation Warp Speed:

In the Press

Biden’s Hail Mary for Re-election Will Cost the U.S. Economy | RealClearHealth | 07/19/2024

by sfrazee | Jul 19, 2024

By Tomas J. Philipson July 19, 2024 As President Biden works to shore up support before the election and after a difficult first debate his...

This Is How President Biden ‘Beat Medicare’ | The Wall Street Journal | 07/09/2024

by sfrazee | Jul 9, 2024

By Tomas J. Philipson July 9, 2024 His Inflation Reduction Act leaves patients with less access to medicines and higher premiums. ‘We finally beat...

Competition, Not Regulation, Will Control the Cost of Obesity | National Review | 07/04/2024

by sfrazee | Jul 4, 2024

By Tomas J. Philipson July 4, 2024 Getting the government out of the way so that market forces and innovation...

2024 ECCHC Supply-Side Economics in Healthcare Conference – Watch Now!

The 2024 ECCHC Supply-side Economics in Healthcare Conference convened both in-person and virtually on Friday, May 3. Watch the full conference, or individual presentations and learn more about the conference here!