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

Issue Brief: A Review of the Scientific Literature on the Value of Health

by jmanor | May 16, 2022 | White Papers

There exists a large scientific literature on the value of improved health and how to incorporate that value into policy and decision making where activities impact health outcomes. The purpose of this policy brief is to review literature on the value of health in...

A Final Report Card on the States’ Response to COVID-19

by susuguo | Apr 1, 2022 | White Papers

Almost exactly two years ago COVID-19 spread to the United States. Following the federalism model, the 50 states and their governors and legislators made many of their own pandemic policy choices to mitigate the damage from the virus. States learned from one another...

Lethal Unemployment Bonuses? Substitution and Income Effects on Substance Abuse, 2020-21

by susuguo | Feb 1, 2022 | White Papers

Marginal prices fell, and disposable incomes increased, for drug and alcohol consumers during the pandemic. Most of the amount, timing, and composition of the 240,000 deaths involving alcohol and drugs since early 2020 can be explained by income effects and...

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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

Policy Brief: The Impact of Price Setting at 9 Years on Small Molecule Innovation Under the Inflation Reduction Act | October 2023

by mheinl | Oct 3, 2023

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...

The Problems with Drug Price Controls | The National Review Capital Matters | 9/27/23

by mheinl | Sep 27, 2023

by Tomas J. Philipson in The National Review Capital Matters "The Inflation Reduction Act's Medicare price controls create bad incentives for drug...

Gilead-backed study warns IRA price negotiations could hit R&D harder than expected | Fierce Biotech | 09/06/2023

by susuguo | Sep 6, 2023

How hard will the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) hit pharma R&D? Harder than the government expected, according to work (PDF) by the University...

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!