Aggregate Health Expenditures, National Income, and Institutions for Private Property

Abstract

Being careful about the potential for endogeneity bias, I find robust evidence that "institutions for private property" share a more fundamental relationship with health expenditures than does national income. This research should interest a wide audience. First, health scholars may be interested in its relatively careful estimate of income's relationship to health spending. Second, institutions and commitment scholars should be interested in its evidence of institutions' primacy in a heretofore overlooked, but theoretically and substantively attractive, application. Finally, policy entrepreneurs may find important the implication that reforming governance structures can be more productive than is directly funding health services. Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005.

Why U.S. health care expenditure and ranking on health care indicators are so different from Canada’s

“…There is some double counting, for example: the relatively high remuneration of health professions (Baumol's cost disease) in the U.S. is also reflected in the relatively high costs of obesity and gun injuries, and the relatively high administration costs are also counted in the 1 It is to be expected that relationships at a micro level do not show up in aggregate data at a macro level when there are significant differences in health care systems. This did not withhold researchers such as for example Falaschetti (2005) and Delnoij et al (2000) to implement large cross-country studies of health expenditure. 2 According to Birenbaum (2002), the American choice for a privately organized insurance system does not imply that America offers more choice than Canada's National Health Insurance system.…”