Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Are The Benefits Of Medicine Worth What We Pay For It?, David M. Cutler

Center for Policy Research

Is medical care worth it? Conventional wisdom says no, but my answer is emphatically yes. The benefits that we have received from medical advance are enormously greater than the costs. I suggest that public policy far outweighs the importance of cost containment relative to coverage expansion; we could in fact spend more and get a lot more for our health care dollars. In what follows, I talk about the costs and benefits of medical advance, focusing on two areas where I have done the most work: improvements in cardiovascular disease care and care for low birth weight infants. In each …