...Health care expenditure in the United States has grown rapidly, exceeding the annual growth in GDP by 2.5% since 1960. This rise has strained budgets and is the focus of the current national debate over health reform. Conventional wisdom holds that the primary driver of cost growth is medical...

... expenditures attributable to prescription drugs. It examines both overall prescription drug uses and use by class. It then discusses the implications of changing disability rates for drug benefits and for overall health care expenditures. Disabled elderly defining Medicare Modernization Act 2006 Medicare...

... Seiritsu Ogura is professor of economics at Hosei University. Reiko Suzuki is a senior economist at the Japan Center for Economic Research. This chapter describes the distribution of health care expenditures among the elderly in Japan. It examines both regional and interpersonal variations...