This text strikes the necessary balance of population-based health economics and the more traditional, market-oriented approach to health care economics. The Fifth Edition provides the necessary tools to develop a systematic and disciplined approach for solving economic problems in a health care context while learning the importance of being able to identify, define, measure, explain, and predict certain economic phenomena and evaluate the relevance of end results. Fundamental, yet comprehensive in coverage, the focus is on how to think about economic problems in a systematic way--using the three major tasks of economics--Descriptive Economics, Explanatory Economics, and Evaluative Economics.