"Health Economics and Financing is a primer for the economic analysis of medical markets. Its intended audiences are students of medicine, public health, policy, and administration who wish to engage the central economic issues of their field without prolonged preparatory work; beginning...

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...