Moral Failure And Health Costs

What to do about the seemingly inexorable rise in health spending has been the central health policy challenge for two generations of health economists and policymakers. In 1965, before Medicare and Medicaid, health spending was about 5.8 percent of GDP. In 2013, it was nearly 18 percent. And GDP quadrupled during this same period

Over the past 30 years, there are been two warring political narratives explaining health spending growth, with two different culprits and indicated remedies. At their cores, these narratives blame the main actors in the health care drama -- patients and physicians -- for rising costs.