It’s Still The Prices, Stupid: Why The US Spends So Much On Health Care, And A Tribute To Uwe Reinhardt

A 2003 article titled "It's the Prices, Stupid," and coauthored by the three of us and the recently deceased Uwe Reinhardt found that the sizable differences in health spending between the US and other countries were explained mainly by health care prices. As a tribute to him, we used...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Health Affairs 2019-01, Vol.38 (1), p.87-95
Main Authors: Anderson, Gerard F., Hussey, Peter, Petrosyan, Varduhi
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Beds
Cooperation
Costs
Economic analysis
Economic development
Electronic health records
GDP
Gross Domestic Product
Health care
Health care expenditures
Health care policy
Health insurance
Health policy
Health services
Hospitals
Industrialized nations
International cooperation
International economic organizations
Internet
Medical personnel
Medical records
Nurses
Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act 2010-US
Per capita
Physicians
Policy making
Prices
Private sector
Statistics
Trends
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:A 2003 article titled "It's the Prices, Stupid," and coauthored by the three of us and the recently deceased Uwe Reinhardt found that the sizable differences in health spending between the US and other countries were explained mainly by health care prices. As a tribute to him, we used Organization for Economic cooperation and Development (OEcD) Health Statistics to update these analyses and review critiques of the original article. The conclusion that prices are the primary reason why the US spends more on health care than any other country remains valid, despite health policy reforms and health systems restructuring that have occurred in the US and other industrialized countries since the 2003 article's publication. On key measures of health care resources per capita (hospital beds, physicians, and nurses), the US still provides significantly fewer resources compared to the OEcD median country. Since the US is not consuming greater resources than other countries, the most logical factor is the higher prices paid in the US. Because the differential between what the public and private sectors pay for medical services has grown significantly in the past fifteen years, US policy makers should focus on prices in the private sector.
ISSN:0278-2715
1544-5208
DOI:10.1377/hlthaff.2018.05144