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

Economic Activity and the Value of Medical Innovation during a Pandemic

by susuguo | Jun 9, 2021 | White Papers

The “shutdown” economy of April 2020 is compared to a normally functioning economy both in terms of market and nonmarket activities. Three novel methods and data indicate that a full shutdown of “nonessential” activities puts market production about 25 % below normal...

The Backward Art of Slowing the Spread? Congregation Efficiencies during COVID-19

by Matt Fey | Apr 26, 2021 | Uncategorized, White Papers

The spread of COVID-19 in the United States has prompted extraordinary, although often untested, steps by individuals and institutions to limit infections. Schools, restaurants, entertainment venues, and many other places of business were required to close under the...

The Value of Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance

by Matt Fey | Apr 26, 2021 | Uncategorized, White Papers

Employer-sponsored health insurance (ESI) is over a trillion-dollar market with about 160 million Americans (a majority) participating as plan members, of which about 80 million are policy holders. The policies are valuable not only to employers and employees, but...

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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

The SMART Prices Act is anything but smart | The Hill | 06/29/23

by susuguo | Jun 29, 2023

By Thomas Philipson America’s largest pharmaceutical companies continue to sound the alarm about last year’s Inflation Reduction Act. In late May,...

Mulligan, Philipson Cited in the 2023 Joint Economic Report | Report of the Joint Economic Committee Congress of the United States on the 2023 Economic Report of the President Republican Response | 6/27/2023

by mheinl | Jun 27, 2023

See citations on pp. 128, 129, 132, 133, 134, 145, 147, 151. View the full report here.

Three reforms that will lower Medicare costs and improve care | The Hill | 06/25/23

by susuguo | Jun 25, 2023

By Tomas J. Philipson Everyone wants to keep Medicare on solid financial footing. But getting agreement on how to go about it is a challenge,...

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!