This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: In Phillip Zane's classroom, students weigh an invitation to jump out of an airplane. The skydiving lesson and jump are free, and the exercise assumes there is zero risk of death.
But an injury could mean $10,000 in medical expenses and $1,000 in lost wages. Some have health insurance. Everyone has to decide whether to take the leap.
The imaginary jump brings a question of health economics within reach: how insurance can change the risks people are willing to take, and what happens when those choices add up across a health care system. Zane, an associate professor in the Department of Health Administration, Policy, and Informatics, has built his Health Economics and Policy course around such experiments, pulling students into questions that can seem abstract or remote on a textbook page. He and his colleagues, including associate professor Debora Goetz Goldberg, describe the approach in a new paper, "More Than a Game," published in a special issue of the Journal of Health Administration Education focused on gamification.
Course evaluations from 129 students between 2022 and 2025 suggest the approach resonated: about 89% found the class environment engaging, and 85% said the teaching methods enhanced their learning. In written feedback, students said the games clarified challenging concepts and exposed them to classmates' different approaches. The idea took hold during a summer of online teaching in 2022, when most students kept their cameras off.
Zane wanted a way to keep them engaged. "It's a topic that I love, but they didn't seem to get it," he said. Many of his health administration students came to the course with little background or interest in economics.
Game theory—which examines how people make decisions when their outcomes depend on others' choices—offered a way in. A former antitrust lawyer, Zane had used its principles in the past to help clients decide whether to settle lawsuits. Now he thought it might help students understand the economic forces underpinning health care.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
