Is American Health Care Uniquely Inefficient? Evidence from Prescription Drugs / Margaret Kyle, Heidi L. Williams.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kyle, Margaret.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Williams, Heidi L.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w23068.

NBER working paper series no. w23068

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2017.

Summary:

Alan Garber and Jonathan Skinner (2008) famously conjectured that the US health care system was "uniquely inefficient" relative to other countries. We test this idea using cross-country data on prescription drug sales newly linked with an arguably objective measure of relative therapeutic benefits, or drug quality. Specifically, we investigate how higher and lower quality drugs diffuse in the US relative to Australia, Canada, Switzerland, and the UK. Our tabulations suggest that lower quality drugs diffuse more in the US relative to high quality drugs, compared to each of our four comparison countries - consistent with Garber and Skinner's conjecture.

Notes:

Print version record

January 2017.