A seminal 1963 article by Kenneth Arrow, often credited with giving rise to health economics as a discipline, drew conceptual distinctions between health and other goods.[1] Factors that distinguish health economics from other areas include extensive government intervention, intractable uncertainty in several dimensions, asymmetric information, barriers to entry, externalities and the presence of a third-party agent.[2] In healthcare, the third-party agent is the physician, who makes purchasing decisions (e.g., whether to order a lab test, prescribe a medication, perform a surgery, etc.) while being insulated from the price of the product or service.