Assignment 2: Discussion Assignment

To support your work, use your course and text readings and also use outside sources. As in all assignments, cite your sources in your work and provide references for the citations in APA format.

Healthcare Costs

Growth in national health spending closely tracked growth in nominal gross domestic product (GDP) in 2010 and 2011, and health spending as a share of GDP remained stable from 2009 through 2011, at 17.9 percent (Micah et al., 2011).

Using the above information and other information you will be directed to below, do the following:

• Define the economic principle of opportunity cost.
• Locate current GDP expenditures and express the percentages in a graph or a chart.

  You will find the necessary information either on the October 16th, 2014 post of the Health Affairs Blog or on other websites that contain relevant information: Slow Health Care Spending Growth Moderates GDP Growth In The Short Term And Policy Targets Should Reflect This.

• Explain whether spending 17.9% of GDP is too much or too little to spend on healthcare.
• Defend your position using the concept of opportunity cost and highlight specific GDP expenditures that are impacted by healthcare expenditure (opportunity cost).

Reference:

Micah, H., Martin A. B., Benson, J., Catlin, A., & The National Health Expenditure

Accounts Team (2011). National Health Spending In 2011: Overall Growth

Remains Low, But Some Payers And Services Show Signs Of Acceleration.

Health Affairs. Retrieved from http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/32/

1/87.abstract

Lee., & H., R. (2015). Economics for Healthcare Managers, 3rd Edition