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,...

The “state of the art” in forecasting long run medical spending is assessed in models used by CMS, CBO, and the Society of Actuaries. Tracking medical expenditures by nominal dollar growth and real per capita spending are useful, yet focusing on the share (of wages, laborforce, or GDP)...

As the forecasting perspective changes from short to medium to long run, the appropriate measure of health spending and the choice of which variables to hold constant, and which to include, changes. In the short run, current dollar spending is the best unit, and the primary factors affecting...

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,...

ABSTRACT/SYNOPSIS. Medicine is technologically dynamic but fiscally inertial. Major change in the health sector takes time. Responses to macroeconomic shocks are subject to lags of varying lengths, from several years to many decades. There may also be feedback and reverse causality, as when...