This paper reviews the public sector role in the provision of health care. A first role of the government is to use tax policy to correct externalities associated with individual behaviors. Estimates suggest that the external effects of many `sins' such as alcohol consumption are greater than...

Estimating medical care productivity is a central economic challenge. This paper develops a satellite account for the US health sector that appropriately measures health care productivity and applies that to the elderly population between 1999 and 2012. The central output of the satellite...

Using two hundred years of national and Massachusetts data on medical care and health, we examine how central medical care is to life expectancy gains. While common theories about medical care cost growth stress growing demand, our analysis highlights the importance of supply side factors,...