Charges and Fees

David Reisman

Chapter 7 in The Political Economy of Health Care, 1993, pp 119-140 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract James Buchanan has expressed ‘major concern’ at the escalation in the cost of care: ‘In the United States, a large and ever-increasing share of total economic value is directed toward outlay on medical or health care services … It becomes relatively easy to think of a share of one-quarter of the total value produced in the economy being devoted to medical and health care services by the century’s turn … The finitude of the resource base, the labor force and its complement of accumulated and natural capital, guarantees that the share of total value directed into medical services cannot continue to grow without limit.’1 His reference is explicitly to the United States but his anxiety is of greater generality still. In the words of an influential report submitted to the British Government in the bicentennial year of the Wealth of Nations: There is ample evidence to demonstrate that demand for health care throughout the world is rising inexorably. England has no immunity from this phenomenon. And because it can also be shown that supply of health care actually fuels further demand, it is inevitable that the supply of health care services can never keep pace with the rising demands placed upon them. Demand will always be one jump ahead. This is a problem for Government and society in general.2

Keywords: Health Care Service; Marginal Utility; Supplementary Insurance; Free Care; Scarce Medical Resource (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1993
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-37830-8_7

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9780230378308

DOI: 10.1057/9780230378308_7

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().