Course Syllabus

O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs

H324 Health Policy

Fall 2026

 

Instructor: Cydney McGuire, PhD, MPH, Assistant Professor; email: cydmcgui@iu.edu; office: SPEA 341B

Teaching Assistant: TBA, contact via Canvas message or email: TBA

Class Meeting: Monday and Wednesday, 11:10 AM - 12:25 PM, SPEA PV 277

Office Hour: Tuesdays 3 PM – 4 PM in SPEA 341B or book an appointment to meet via Teams using the provided link.

Contact: Please email me with H324 in the subject line to schedule an appointment to talk with me outside of class time or office hours.

Required Texts

  • Gruber, Jonathan.  (2011).  Health Care Reform: What It Is, Why It's Necessary, and How it Works.  Hill and Wang.  (ISBN  9780809053971). Available through IU Bookstore Site. Here is the Amazon link as well (Links to an external site.).
  • All readings except for the Gruber book will be available electronically through Canvas and listed in their relevant modules. All readings will have a URL link or a link to a PDF file for you to access the reading directly. If any link does not work properly, please let me know by email immediately. 

Course Description

This course will focus on current health policy issues within the context of the U.S. health care system. The course will familiarize students with the political environment of public policy, introduce major health care policy perspectives, and apply those analytical models to a series of health policy issues.

Additional Details:    

The healthcare and public health sectors provide a fascinating place to study policy making in action. This class introduces you to the history and current development of health policy issues. The focus is on domestic policy, but the importance of international health policy will be evident in several of the topics. We will begin with a discussion of the importance of health and healthcare in both the U.S. economy and policy making arena and discuss rationales for government intervention in health related markets. We will then discuss the U.S. health insurance system, including both privately purchased and publicly provided health insurance. We will then move to a discussion of how U.S. health insurance has changed due to the Affordable Care Act. We will then transition into a discussion of healthcare policy issues including innovation, competition, and financial incentives. Finally, the semester will conclude by discussing public health policy. Throughout the course we will acknowledge the differences, but crucial interaction between health insurance, health care, and health. 

The focus of this course is health policy.  Within that focus, I have selected class materials that present a variety of topics and arguments.  It is likely that connections between our course and current and/or historical events outside the classroom will come up in lectures, class discussions, and assignments.  Those connections may require careful thought rather than being immediately obvious, but the ability to understand and analyze connections among ideas and events is a core skill for understanding health policy and its relationship to careers in healthcare management. 

 Learning Outcomes 

Course Goal: By the end of the semester you will be able to explain major issues of U.S. health policy and argue for and against various policy solutions. 

Learning Outcomes:

  1. Identify the reasons for government to play or not play a role in health policy issues
  2. Describe major aspects of U.S. Health Policy
  3. Discuss recent health reform and reasons it may or may not be effective
  4. Gather information from reputable sources to research policy issues
  5. Compare arguments about the merits of policy solutions