The essay in the 2005 annual report summarizes the themes and consensus-based prescriptions for action that emerged from the Boston Fed's 50th economic conference, Wanting It All: The Challenge of Reforming the U.S. Health Care System, held in June 2005.

The share of health-care spending in GDP has been rising rapidly in the United States and other advanced industrial countries since at least 1960. As Jones (2005) and others have argued, the rapid increase in the price of medical care likely is demand-driven to a large degree, reflecting the...

Medical-care expenditures have been rising rapidly and now represent almost one-fifth of all U.S. economic activity. An analysis of the privately insured health-care market from 2003 to 2007 indicates that higher prices for medical services contributed largely to nominal spending growth, but did...

An assessment of the effects of proposed reductions in income and Social Security taxes on middle-income Americans and of cuts in health care spending, using the generational accounting method to examine their likely impact on both current and future national saving rates.