Teaching with case studies: An application from health care economics

Case study analysis can be an exciting way to challenge and engage students at all levels of economic course work.  Students are presented a narrative highlighting a real-world scenario or series of events and are required to use economic theories and models to explain the situation at hand.  Case study analysis can be conducted across a variety of courses—one class where I have found these techniques particularly successful is in Health Care Economics. 

The source material for this case study is from National Public Radio’s This American Life, Episode 391: More is Less, which originally aired in 2009.  The episode describes the rising costs of health care in the United States and consists of four acts.  The first three each provide several short stories highlighting the role health care providers, patients, and insurance companies play in driving up the cost of care. 

Students are assigned to either read (the episode's transcript) or listen to the episode in full and to act as a “lawyer” for one of the groups featured in the first three acts.  Their mission is to use relevant economic tools, models, and theories to defend their “client” and to demonstrate why the other two groups are truly to blame.  From this experience students gain an understanding of the complex relationships and interactions that take place in health care markets.  They also gain a deeper understanding of economic tools and models from the course as they must apply them in a variety of contexts within a single assignment.