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...

Most causes and correlates of short-run (1 to 3 year) fluctuations in health care costs and insurance premiums are unrelated to long term trend or “drift,” and thus pose quite different problems with regard to accuracy and bias. Short-run variation is dominated by lagged inflation, wage...

Quantifying the growth of medical expenditures over decades or centuries is challenging. Attempting to do so reveals a number of inconsistencies, ambiguities and other measurement issues. The problems are both practical and conceptual. This article discusses national accounting frameworks,...

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,...

Section I of this chapter briefly reviews the literature on medical spending, which suggests that health expenditures began small but steadily increased throughout history (from 1 percent to 4 percent of GDP), then began to increase rapidly among wealthier developed countries after 1950. Section...

This review utilizes a number of historical and contemporary sources to trace the growth of national health expenditures in the United States from 1776 to 2026, supporting four empirical generalizations: 1) Peak rates of growth occurred during the decade 1960-1970 as the modern national health...