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

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...

The Patient Impact of Manufacturing Copay Assistance in an Era of Rising Out-of-Pocket Costs

by jmanor | Dec 15, 2021 | White Papers

This paper measures the impact of manufacturer-provided copay assistance on total out-of-pocket costs, drug utilization, and implications for patient outcomes. Using data dating back to 2015, we find manufacturer-provided copay assistance mitigated the rise in copay...

Peltzman Revisited: Quantifying 21st Century Opportunity Costs of FDA Regulation

by jmanor | Dec 8, 2021 | White Papers

This paper revisits Peltzman (1973) in light of two recent opportunities to quantitatively assess tradeoffs in drug regulation. First, reduced regulatory barriers to drug manufacturing associated with the 2017 reauthorization of Generic Drug User Fee Amendments were...

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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!