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Learning Path for Healthcare Change Leaders

Learning Path for Healthcare Change Leaders
Photo by Marek Studzinski / Unsplash

A very different kind of healthcare system - simpler, more affordable, more cost-effective, and more functional - is very possible. But it requires a willingness to swap out some long-standing assumptions and mental models. The following learning path is designed for leaders who want to get educated on how healthcare could and should work.

Books

The following books provide grounding in the finance and risk management approaches that underpin insurance in general, with a specific focus on the mental models that guide these approaches.

  • The Economics, Regulation, and Systemic Risk of Insurance Markets Koijen, Hufeld and Thimann - Oxford Press. Provides grounding in what can go wrong in insurance and risk transfer methods, and approaches for protecting beneficiaries.
  • Embracing Risk - The Changing Culture of Insurance and Responsibility - Collection edited by Tom Baker & Jonathan Simon. University of Chicago Press. Includes Deborah Stone's essay "Beyond Moral Hazard: Insurance as Moral Opportunity."
  • Managing Risk in Reinsurance Hauter and Jones - Oxford Press. Deep coverage of the evolution of reinsurance and the financial innovation driving better approaches.
  • Health Policy Issues - An Economic Perspective Feldstein - Health Administration Press – Overview of healthcare policy challenges and opportunities.
  • Against the Gods The Remarkable History of Risk Bernstein - John Wiley and Sons – helpful history of risk management and how frameworks of thought (moral hazard for example) continue to evolve.
  • Capital in the 21st Century Picketty – Belknap Harvard Press – definitive guide to the social impact of capital management practices.
  • Deep Medicine Topol – Basic Books – Scan of technology innovations impacting healthcare from a medical perspective.
  • The Exponential Age Azar – Diversion Books – Explanation of the “exponential” thesis: how the combinatorial effects of recent technology innovations (cloud, AI, blockchain) are combining to drive accelerated change.
  • The Economics of Social Issues – Sharp, Register and Grimes – Irwin Books – covers impact of health policies and practices on communities and populations.
  • Bullshit Jobs David Graeber - Simon and Schuster - Snarky but spot on analysis of why regulated industries that pool and manage funds tend toward wastefulness. Required reading for anyone who wants to understand the artificial complexity and cost of healthcare.
  • Somers and Somers have published a number of pieces about the progression of health insurance in the 20th century, for example: H. M. Somers & A. R. Somers, Doctors, Patients and Health Insurance. The Organization and Financing of Medical Care. Washington, The Brookings Institution, 1961

Online Resources

Emerging Tech

History of Health Insurance

Several summaries of the history of insurance have been published, usually from the perspective of employer brokers:

Models and Simulations

Moral Hazard

Regulatory Capture

  • The Theory of Economic Regulation (PDF) by George Stigler. The original articulation of the problem of "Regulatory Capture" where a regulated industry ends up "capturing" (manipulating) regulators and regulatory frameworks for its own interests. Very helpful for understanding the artificial cost and complexity of healthcare.

Key Issues