LED Faculty Spotlight: Logan McLeod

Refreshed, Rejuvenated, and Refocused: Highlights of Sabbatical

Logan McLeod, Associate Professor in the Department of Economics, is a health economist whose research broadly looks at the economics of primary health care. This includes the use of health care services, determinants of healthy behaviours, and health care financing.

When most of us think about Canada’s health care system we often think of having “free” health care (i.e., public financed physician and hospital services paid for through government revenue). However, other health care services (such as prescription drugs or paramedical services such as chiropractors, physiotherapists, and dental care) are often paid for through private sources such as out-of-pocket payments or private health insurance coverage through an employer.

During his 6-month sabbatical, Dr. McLeod focused on two projects related to his research agenda on health care finance. The first project, joint with Dr. Jeff Chan, looks at how local labour market conditions affect oral health. Dental care in Canada is not publicly financed (for most people) and is often privately financed via employer-provided dental insurance. The connection between employment and financial access to dental care suggests local economic conditions may be an important driver of oral health at the community level. The second paper looks at how some private health insurance plans contain costs for paramedical services. It is often the case the providers of paramedical services do not have a published fee schedule to set their fees which means their fees are set based on market conditions which can lead to increased costs. Within private insurance plans for paramedical services, insurance companies attempt to contain costs by determining what would be a “reasonable” and “customary” fee for a particular service. This paper describes the standard model used to determine reasonable and customary fee limits and discusses implications of an insurance company changing the models’ parameters on the costs incurred by patients. In May, Dr. McLeod attended the Canadian Health Economists’ Study Group meetings hosted by McGill University and then presented his paper on reasonable and customary limits at the annual meeting of the Canadian Economics Association held at the Université du Québec à Montréal.

Fortunately, Dr. McLeod was also able to take some time and travel abroad. Along with his daughter Kate, he visited New Zealand in March to escape our snow and enjoy their summer weather. They were based in Hamilton (about an hour south of Auckland) with family, which allowed for them to take short trips to the surrounding areas. They headed south-east to Rotorua where they visited Te Puia (www.tepuia.com) which houses part of the historic Te Whakarewarewa Geothermal Valley and New Zealand’s Mãori Arts and Crafts Institute. They headed east to Tauranga where they hiked Mount Maunganui then west to Raglan to see the black sand beaches. Heading south, they travelled to the Waitomo glow worm caves (www.waitomo.com). And finally, they headed north to the beach town of Waipu where they learned how to surf and discovered a familiar local restaurant: McLeod's Pizza Barn & Brewery (https://mcleodspizzabarn.co.nz).

Now refreshed, rejuvenated, and refocused, Dr. McLeod is back in the classroom this fall teaching Microeconomic Theory (EC270) and looks forward to teaching EC481 and Health Economics (EC348) in the winter term.