D914 is Healthcare Economics, carried at WGU as MHA 6915 and worth three competency units. It covers economic principles, financial management strategies and reimbursement mechanisms in healthcare. The reason it feels harder than a general economics course is that healthcare violates the conditions ordinary market analysis assumes. The buyer often does not choose, the chooser does not pay, the payer did not receive the service, prices are frequently unknown at the point of decision, and demand is created partly by the seller. Graduate work in this course is the discipline of applying economic tools to a market that behaves like that and saying what follows.
The assumptions that fail, and why it matters to your paper
Start with the separation of decision from payment. A clinician orders, a patient consents, an insurer pays and an employer funds the insurer. Four parties, one transaction, and none of them sees the full price. That single feature explains most of what looks irrational in healthcare spending, and referring to it explicitly makes a paper read as informed rather than as a textbook summary.
Add asymmetric information, since patients cannot easily judge whether a recommended service is necessary, which is why professional licensure and quality regulation exist. Add insurance, which reduces the price at the point of use and therefore raises the quantity demanded, which is why cost sharing exists and why the design of that cost sharing matters. Add limited price transparency, so competition often runs on convenience and reputation rather than on price.
When a scored aspect asks you to apply an economic concept, the strong answer names the concept, states the healthcare specific complication, and then makes the claim anyway with the complication accounted for. Demand for emergency care is relatively insensitive to price because the decision is urgent and the alternative is untreated illness, so a copay increase changes revenue more than it changes utilization. That sentence uses elasticity properly, in context, and it is worth more than a paragraph defining elasticity in the abstract.
Sizing an economics paper against the aspects
Your rubric lives in the Course of Study rather than the catalog. In this subject the aspects usually spread across concepts, market analysis, reimbursement mechanics and a financial recommendation, and the last one carries the most weight per word.
The word budget, worked. Take a 1,900 word paper with eight scored aspects. Reserve 130 for a framing paragraph naming the organization, the service and the payer context, leaving 1,770, or about 221 per aspect flat. Concept definition aspects should not exceed 120 words each, since your reader teaches this material. If two aspects are definitional, that frees roughly 200 words. Move them into the reimbursement and recommendation aspects, taking each to about 320. Reimbursement is where the arithmetic and the sector knowledge meet, and it is the section most likely to be read closely, so it deserves the funding.
Where a task supplies numbers, work them before writing anything. A recommendation drafted before the arithmetic is done tends to survive into the final version even when the arithmetic later contradicts it, and evaluators notice the mismatch immediately.
The shape of an economic analysis memo
Use the format your directions specify when they specify one. Otherwise this arrangement moves from concept to consequence in the order a finance committee reads.
| Section | What it establishes | The number it should contain |
|---|---|---|
| Situation | The service, the organization and the decision at hand | Volume, or current margin, or payer mix percentages |
| Market conditions | Competitors, referral patterns, capacity and demand drivers | Market share or population served |
| Payment mechanism | How this service is paid for and by whom | Rate per unit, or payment per episode, or capitated amount |
| Cost structure | Fixed and variable costs, and what changes with volume | Cost per unit at two different volumes |
| Economic analysis | Margin, break even, incentive effects, elasticity where relevant | The break even volume, computed and shown |
| Stakeholder effects | Who gains and loses under this arrangement | The size of the shift for at least one party |
| Recommendation | The decision, its assumptions and its sensitivity | What happens if the key assumption is wrong by 20 percent |
The sensitivity line in the last row is the cheapest credibility available in this course. Stating that the recommendation holds if volume falls by a fifth, and reverses if it falls by a third, converts a confident assertion into a defensible one.
Evidence craft with money and incentives
Economic writing fails when it is either all theory or all arithmetic. Keeping both visible is the discipline.
- Show the computation, not just the result. A break even figure with its formula and inputs can be checked, and an unshown number cannot be scored for accuracy.
- Separate charges, payments and costs in your vocabulary. A charge is what is billed, a payment is what is received, a cost is what it consumes. Using them interchangeably is the most common technical error in this subject.
- Name the payment mechanism precisely: fee for service, per diem, case rate, capitation, value based arrangement with shared savings. Each one creates a different incentive, and the incentive is your analysis.
- Use published sources for rates and market data and label internal figures as estimates.
- State the time period for every financial figure and hold one unit throughout the paper.
- Cite economic literature for mechanisms and sector sources for conditions, in APA at the point of the claim.
The habit that lifts an economics paper is naming the incentive created by the arrangement you are analyzing, including when it is uncomfortable. A case rate rewards shorter stays, which can be good for patients and can also create pressure to discharge early. Writing both halves is analysis. Writing one is advocacy.
What separates Competent from a submission sent back
The most frequent return is the definition essay: concepts explained accurately and never applied to the organization. The second is the vocabulary slip, where charges and costs get used as if they were the same thing, which undermines every number that follows. The third is the recommendation without sensitivity, presented as certainty from assumptions the paper never listed.
Work that passes on the first read usually shows a worked calculation with inputs visible, correct use of the payment vocabulary, an explicit statement of the incentive the payment mechanism creates, stakeholder effects that are sized rather than asserted, and a recommendation with its key assumption named and tested.
Performance assessment work at WGU can be revised and resubmitted with no grade penalty, so the cost of a return is queue time inside your six month flat rate term. In this subject the rebuild is often mechanical, since fixing a vocabulary error means correcting the same word in eleven places, so it is worth getting the language right in the first draft.
Where a proctored objective assessment accompanies this course in your plan, our involvement is preparation only. We drill definitions, work practice problems and give an honest readiness call. The proctored exam is yours to sit, and no portal credentials are ever requested.
Six mistakes that cost time in D914
- Charges treated as revenue. Almost nobody pays billed charges. Analysis built on them describes a market that does not exist.
- Elasticity asserted without context. Say what makes this particular service sensitive or insensitive to price before drawing a conclusion.
- Fixed and variable costs not separated. Break even analysis is impossible without the split, and it is the calculation most tasks want.
- Ignoring payer mix. The same service produces different economics under different payers, and average figures hide that entirely.
- Theory with no organization attached. Every concept in the paper should be doing work on the decision in front of you.
- No sensitivity check. One sentence testing the main assumption is the difference between a claim and an analysis.
How we work this course with you
Send the task directions, your rubric and any figures the task supplies, and you get the arithmetic worked first with the inputs laid out so you can see where each number came from, then a section plan mapped to your scored aspects with word counts, a vocabulary check on charges, payments and costs, and a review that tests whether your recommendation still holds when the key assumption moves. Students who work the numbers before the prose usually finish this course faster than they expect, because once the break even figure exists the rest of the memo is explanation rather than discovery.
Questions D914 students ask
Do I need to have taken economics before this course?
Where do I find real reimbursement rates?
How do I write about value based payment without getting lost?
Working the D914 numbers?
Send the MHA 6915 directions and any figures. You get the arithmetic worked and a memo plan back.
Where D914 sits in WGU's programs
The July 2026 catalog places this code in 1 current WGU program. Open a program page for the complete standard path and term positions. The live Degree Plan remains authoritative after transfer credit, substitutions, and mentor planning.
The assessments, one by one
The public catalog does not publish this course's PA/OA identity or task count. WGU Tutors publishes at most one PA manual per course and only from a WGU-controlled public rubric. Until that source exists, PA help begins from the student's real Course of Study and OA support remains preparation only.