Health affairs
-
Medical school tuition and medical student debt have increased dramatically during the past two decades, but loans are available on favorable terms, which makes it possible for students without personal or family means to get a medical education. As an investment, medical education is an excellent choice; its net present value is more than a million dollars. Cost is nevertheless a strong deterrent to potential applicants, especially minority applicants. If tuition and indebtedness continue to increase while physician incomes do not, there may come a time when only the wealthy can finance a medical education, and medical schools may have increasing difficulty recruiting qualified students.
-
We used data from the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB) to study the growth of physician malpractice payments. Judgments at trial account for 4 percent of all malpractice payments; settlements account for the remaining 96 percent. ⋯ These increases are consistent with increases in the cost of health care. A preoccupation with data on judgments, extreme awards, or specific specialties results in an incomplete understanding of the growth of physician malpractice payments.
-
Obesity is responsible for at least 90 billion dollars in direct U. S. health care costs annually. ⋯ The effects of adverse weight in older age have negative implications for healthy aging and lead to greater societal expenditures. Given the high costs and ineffectiveness of existing programs to treat obesity, perhaps the only solution to the obesity epidemic is primary prevention of weight gain beginning in youth.
-
Is the health of the U. S. population improving or getting worse, and how are health and medical costs influenced by obesity? How will anticipated advances in the biomedical sciences influence life expectancy and the cost of health care? The paper by Dana Goldman and colleagues is a daring speculation on the life-extending effects of possible future technologies--a valuable exercise given the speed of technological advances. Darius Lakdawalla and colleagues provide a methodologically solid basis for concluding that not only does obesity kill, it also takes an alarming toll on health and health care spending at levels that require immediate intervention.
-
The pace of health spending growth slowed in 2003 for the first time in seven years, driven in part by a slowdown in public spending growth. U. S. health care spending rose 7.7 percent in 2003, much slower than the 9.3 percent growth in 2002. ⋯ U. S. health spending accounted for 15.3 percent of U. S. gross domestic product in 2003, an increase of 0.4 percentage points from 2002.