I'm on sabbatical for the 2007-2008 academic year, retooling so that I can teach ECO 471 - Health Economics when I return. Here are some things I've learned so far:
1. More medical care spending doesn't lead to better health outcomes. This is found in the famous
RAND experiments,
cross state studies, and
cross national studies.
2. The differences across income groups are larger than
differences across racial/ethnic groups, but even after controlling for education, and income there are still important racial differences. Quite possibly we have at work
3. Sometimes increasing poverty can
improve some heath outcomes.
4. Sometimes medical care is
bad for you. After all
To Err is Human.
5.
Drugs are good, though not universally so. Then there is the problem of
me too drugs.
6. Most improvements in
life expectancy have been due to improvements in diet and public health, such as clean water, sanitation, etc.
My take away from all this is that there is a lot to improving health outcomes that is unrelated to heath care. It turns out that there are a lot of other factors that are more important. Your friends, the neighborhood you live in, your taste for risky activities.
