TY  - JOUR
AU  - Dunn, Abe
AU  - Liebman, Eli B
AU  - Shapiro, Adam
TI  - Decomposing Medical-Care Expenditure Growth
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 23117
PY  - 2017
Y2  - February 2017
DO  - 10.3386/w23117
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w23117
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w23117.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Abe Dunn
7204 Willow Avenue
Takoma Park, Mary 20912
U.S.
Tel: 3012191851
Fax: Economist
E-Mail: Abe.Dunn@bea.gov

Eli B. Liebman
B428 Amos Hall 
620 South Lumpkin Street
 Athens, GA 30602
E-Mail: eli.liebman@uga.edu

Adam Shapiro
Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco
101 Market Street, MS 1130
San Francisco, CA 94105
E-Mail: adam.shapiro@sf.frb.org
M1  - published as Abe Dunn, Eli Liebman, Adam Hale Shapiro. "Decomposing Medical Care Expenditure Growth," in Ana Aizcorbe, Colin Baker, Ernst R. Berndt, and David M. Cutler, editors, "Measuring and Modeling Health Care Costs" University of Chicago Press (2018)

M3  - presented at "Measuring and Modeling Health Care Costs", October 18-19, 2013
AB  - 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.
ER  -