Economics, values, and health care reform.

AbstractInterest in health economics has soared over the past three decades, stimulated by intellectual innovations, greater availability of data, and, most importantly, a surge in health care spending from 6 to 14 percent of GDP.1 An eleven-fold increase2 in the number of Ph.D.s has enabled many professional schools, government agencies,3 and research institutes to add health economists to their staffs. Nevertheless, the health care debate of 1993–1994 benefited much less than it could have from the results of their research.…