2020/08/11 by Mark Stelzner, Daniel Taekmin Nam · 1 citation
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Health Professions · #Healthcare Policy and Management #Healthcare cost, quality, practices #Primary Care and Health Outcomes
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/00346764.2020.1804607
openalex publication_date 2020/08/11 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/19
As a country, the United States spends significantly more on healthcare than other advanced industrialized countries, and Americans have comparably worse health outcomes. Both are developments of the last four decades. In this paper, we look at how change in antitrust and patent law and thus change in market power in the largest four subsectors of healthcare, hospitals, physician groups, prescription drugs, and net medical insurance, have contributed to the increasing cost of medical care in the United States. We show that the annual rent – the degree to which health care is overpriced as a result of market power – was between 2.47 and 4.30 percent of GDP in 2016 – truly a big cost for big medicine.