HIM / Biotech Alumni Newsletter

Professor David Dranove writes book on Health Care Rationing

HIM Professor David Dranove’s latest book, What’s Your Life Worth? Health Care Rationing . . . Who Lives? Who Dies? Who Decides?, was recently published by Prentice Hall. In the book, Dranove previews the transition from today’s ad hoc rationing of health care to an era of “rational rationing,” in which economic analysis of the value of human lives and specific treatments is both explicit and routine. He assess the mixed results of rational rationing in Great Britain, Australia, and Oregon, where government decision-makers struggle with balancing science and politics in the face of budgets that place an alarmingly low value on life.

Professor David Dranove with a copy of his new book, What's Your Life Worth?

Dranove also discusses the processes by which health services researchers have learned to numerically score different diseases to determine which are most worth curing. Researchers use this information to assess which new and sometimes very costly technologies are worth the steep price. What they find is sometimes at odds with the prevailing view of employers, insurers, and, especially, government regulators – groups who want to stop health spending in its tracks.

One of the world’s most respected health care economists, Dranove is the Walter McNerney Distinguished Professor of Health Industry Management and also the Director of the Center for Health Industry Market Economics. His research and teaching focus on problems in industrial organization and business strategy with an emphasis on the health care industry. Dranove, who holds a Ph.D. in Business Economics from Stanford University, has published over 70 research papers, monographs, and book chapters on health economics and pharmacoeconomics. He is also co-author of the popular textbook The Economics of Strategy and the trade books How Hospitals Survived and The Economic Evolution of American Health Care: From Marcus Welby to Managed Care.