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

The Incidence and Magnitude of the Health Costs of In-person Schooling during the COVID-19 Pandemic

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. One of the longest-duration avoidance strategies has been the closing of public-school buildings even to...

Deaths of Despair and the Incidence of Excess Mortality in 2020

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. Some have worried that “the cure is worse than the disease.” Economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton mocked this...

The Value of Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance

by susuguo | Mar 1, 2021 | White Papers

Based on published estimates of its price elasticity of demand and of tax wedges, as well as the method of revealed preference, I estimate that the annual social value of ESI is about $1.5 trillion beyond what policyholders, their employers, and taxpayers pay for it....

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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

Evaluating the Economic Impact of CMS coverage Delays for New Alzheimer’s Drugs | June 2023

by mheinl | Jun 13, 2023

Historically, Medicare has reimbursed drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) including drugs granted accelerated approval. In...

Policy Brief: The Value of Multi-Cancer Early Detection Tests and Limits to Estimating Budget Impacts of Legislation Proposed to Enable Medicare Access | June 2023

by sfrazee | Jun 10, 2023

This policy brief reviews the evidence on the health and cost impacts of multi-cancer early detection (MCED) tests, and the implications for...

Casey Mulligan on Vaccines, the Pandemic, and the FDA | The Library of Economics and Liberty | 05/22/23

by susuguo | May 22, 2023

When there's no vaccine on the market, people will look for other ways to be safe, including school closures and the handwashing of groceries....

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!