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Individual Demand for Healthcare and Aggregate Demand for Healthcare

Individual Demand for Healthcare and Aggregate Demand for Healthcare

One main variation between aggregate demand for healthcare and individual demand for healthcare is that the latter is determined by a single individual’s preferences and income, while the income and preferences of an entire population determine the former. Accordingly, individual demand for healthcare implies the need for healthcare at a specific period. Therefore, the individual has to consider a few factors, like how much they have to pay, whether they can afford it (Gerfin, Kaiser & Schmid, 2015), and their taste, such as their preferences regarding alternative medical practices or contemporary ones. On the other hand, aggregate demand is influenced by factors like increased consumer wealth, increased consumption, and lower interest rates for medical debts, just to name a few (Ang, 2010). For example, wealthy countries have higher aggregate healthcare demand, while the opposite is true for low-income or developing countries (Dewar, 2017).

A second difference between individual demand for healthcare and the aggregate demand for healthcare is that legislative changes do not affect the former. For example, suppose the government implemented legislation to increase federal funding in healthcare. In that case, there would be an increase in aggregate demand for healthcare by the public, while a decrease in federal funding would have the opposite effect. The third difference is that individual healthcare demand depends on a person’s needs. This is in contrast to aggregate healthcare demand, which depends on the needs of society, for example, the utilization of immunization for newborns or vaccinations for the recent global pandemic. Lastly, aggregate healthcare demand applies to goods and services at a large scale. In contrast, individual healthcare demand applies to very small-scale goods and services, like when a patient decides to get a specific medical subscription.

References

Ang, J. B. (2010). The determinants of health care expenditure in Australia. Applied Economics Letters17(7), 639-644.

Dewar, D. M. (2017). Essentials of health economics. Jones & Bartlett Publishers.

Gerfin, M., Kaiser, B., & Schmid, C. (2015). Healthcare demand in the presence of discrete price changes. Health economics24(9), 1164-1177.

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Question 


Discuss how the individual demand for health care differs from the aggregate demand for health care. Provide at least one example.