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,...

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...