Chronic Health Care Spending Disease: A Macro Diagnosis and Prognosis

Good treatment of any disease begins with a comprehensive accurate diagnosis of the underlying problem. Physicians know that symptoms can be misleading and that a prescription to relieve the symptoms without a full understanding of their underlying cause may result in a treatment that exacerbates rather than cures the disease. The main purposes of this paper are: 1) to provide a macro diagnosis of the underlying causes of the chronic health care rising spending disease, the symptom of which is a relentless rise in the share of national income devoted to paying for health care; 2) to provide a prognosis of the future course of the disease; and 3) to offer some tentative possible prescriptions for managing the disease over the next couple of decades.