Ординатура / Хирургия / Библиотека им академика М.И. Перельмана / Книга_17_библиотеки_им_акад_М_И_Перельмана

Substantial research and press attention have been focused on the drivers of increasing health care costs in recent years. In the United States, it is commonly cited that economic activity in the health care sector accounts for nearly a fth of total GDP (Papanicolas etal. 2018). It is also often pointed out that many individuals are overburdened by medical bills, some of whom have been bankrupted by health care treatment costs (Brill 2015). This is weighed against the apparent lack of superiority of US health outcomes when compared with those of other OECD countries. These realities are intertwined but not interchangeable. In some publications, “cost” refers to overall economic activity in the health care sec­tor (i.e., societal cost); alternatively, the term may refer to revenues accrued to health systems via claim reimburse­ments (i.e., payer costs); or to costs borne by patients themselves (i.e., out of pocket costs). It is interesting to note, however, that other economic sectors which con­stitute signicant swaths of economic output are not considered as “costs”, per se. For example, we do not generally speak in terms of “automobile costs” or “food and beverage costs” when referencing the aggregate mar­ket capitalizations of companies in those sectors. Nor do we refer to consumer prices in these markets as costs.