Health care costs represent a nearly 18% of U.S. gross domestic product and 20% of government spending. While there is detailed information on where these health care dollars are spent, there is much less evidence on how this spending affects health. The research in Measuring and Modeling Health...

There is considerable controversy about the causes of regional variations in health care expenditures. Using vignettes from patient and physician surveys linked to fee-for-service Medicare expenditures, this study asks whether patient demand-side factors or physician supply-side factors explain...

This paper examines the role of medical care in improving health and compares that value of better health produced by medical care with the costs of that care. Valuing medical care requires measuring the health of the population. We start by developing a measure of the nation's health capital --...

Partitioning medical spending into conditions is essential to understanding the cost burden of medical care. Two broad strategies have been used to measure disease-specific spending. The first attributes each medical claim to the condition listed as its cause. The second decomposes total...

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,...

Partitioning medical spending into conditions is essential to understanding the cost burden of medical care. Two broad strategies have been used to measure disease-specific spending. The first attributes each medical claim to the condition listed as its cause. The second decomposes total...

As health care financing, organization, and delivery innovations proliferate, the need for comprehensive, detailed data on medical spending has never been more apparent. This study builds on previous work to provide a more comprehensive accounting of medical spending at the individual level than...

There is considerable controversy about the causes of regional variations in health care expenditures. Using vignettes from patient and physician surveys linked to fee-for-service Medicare expenditures, this study asks whether patient demand-side factors or physician supply-side factors explain...