Decomposing Medical-Care Expenditure Growth / Abe Dunn, Eli B. Liebman, Adam Shapiro.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Dunn, Abe.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Liebman, Eli B.

Shapiro, Adam.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w23117.

NBER working paper series no. w23117

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2017.

Summary:

Medical-care expenditures have been rising rapidly, accounting for over 17 percent of GDP in 2012. In this study, we assess the sources of the rising medical-care expenditures in the commercial sector. We employ a novel framework for decomposing expenditure growth into four components at the disease level: service price growth, service utilization growth, treated disease prevalence growth, and demographic shift. The decomposition shows that growth in prices and treated prevalence are the primary drivers of medical-care expenditure growth over the 2003 to 2007 period. There was no growth in service utilization at the aggregate level over this period. Price and utilization growth were especially large for the treatment of malignant neoplasms. For many conditions, treated prevalence has shifted towards preventive treatment and away from treatment for late-stage illnesses.

Notes:

Print version record

February 2017.