The Initiative on Enabling Choice and Competition in Healthcare

The Economics of Buyers Clubs

Presented by Professor Casey Mulligan at the Supply-side Economics in Healthcare 2024 ECCHC Conference

The Impact of AI on Healthcare Supply: Perspective from Industry and the Implied Research Agenda

Presented by Professor Tomas J. Philipson at the Supply-side Economics in Healthcare 2024 ECCHC Conference

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

Non-Covid Excess Deaths, 2020-21: Collateral Damage of Policy Choices?

by jmanor | Aug 11, 2022 | White Papers

From April 2020 through at least the end of 2021, Americans died from non-Covid causes at an average annual rate 97,000 in excess of previous trends. Hypertension and heart disease deaths combined were elevated 32,000. Diabetes or obesity, drug-induced causes, and...

The Impact of Biopharmaceutical Innovation on Health Care Spending

by jmanor | Aug 3, 2022 | White Papers

This paper reviews the evidence covering the impact of biopharmaceuticals on the level and growth of total health care costs. The primary source of spending in health care is on labor, such as doctors, nurses or assistants, which makes up over 70% of overall spending,...

The Value of Pharmacy Benefit Management

by susuguo | Jul 1, 2022 | White Papers

In theory, equilibrium profits for drug patent holders would not involve significant restraints on production and patient utilization if the market had a mechanism for two-part pricing (Oi 1971) or quantity commitments (Murphy, Snyder, and Topel 2014). In fact, patent...

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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

Pharma Patents and the American Way of Innovation | WSJ | 12/19/2023

by susuguo | Dec 19, 2023

By Tomas J. Philipson Regarding your editorial “Biden Ambushes Pharma Patents” (Dec. 11): The Biden administration has caved to progressive...

Former White House Economic Adviser Discusses Covid Policies at HUEA Event | Harvard Undergraduate Economics Association | 12/01/2023

by susuguo | Dec 1, 2023

Former Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers Tomas J. Philipson discussed Covid policies and his experience in the Trump administration at a...

The Value of Accelerated Medical Device Reimbursement | November 2023

by mheinl | Nov 25, 2023

Expediting breakthrough medical device reimbursement has become a recent public policy issue. This paper provides evidence of the value of faster...

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!