Marcia Weaver Explains Two Decades of Health Care Spending Effectiveness

<p><a href="https://www.healthaffairs.org/membership?utm_medium=podcast&amp;utm_source=insider">Join Health Affairs Insider</a>.</p><br><p>It's well known that the United States spends much more than other high-income countries on health care, the most recent estimates from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services published in <em>Health Affairs</em> show that nearly a fifth of US GDP is spent on health care services.</p><p><br></p><p>It's perhaps somewhat less well known that health outcomes lag those of many other countries. Life expectancy and infant mortality rates rank well below not just other high-income countries, but many middle-income countries as well.</p><p><br></p><p>The combination of these two facts leads many to ask the question, "Are we getting our money's worth for all that we spend on health care?"</p><p><br></p><p>However, simply establishing that the US spends a lot on health care and has sub-optimal health outcomes doesn't fully answer the question.</p><p><br></p><p>Marcia Weaver from the University of Washington joins <em>A Health Podyssey</em> to discuss whether we receive value for our high levels of health spending.</p><p><br></p><p>Weaver and coauthors published a paper in the July 2022 of <em>Health Affairs</em> <a href="https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.2021.01515">examining the relationship between health spending and disease burden in the United States</a>. They reached some optimistic conclusions based on the data.</p><p><a href="https://www.pubservice.com/backissue/subbi.aspx?CO=PJ&amp;PC=HR&amp;BI=HRI&amp;utm_medium=podcast&amp;utm_source=a+health+podyssey&amp;utm_campaign=44682&amp;utm_content=44682&amp;utm_term=weaver">Order the July 2022 issue of <em>Health Affairs</em> for research on Type 2 diabetes and more</a>.</p><p><em>Currently, more than 70 percent of our content is freely available - and we'd like to keep it that way. </em><a href="https://www.healthaffairs.org/membership?utm_medium=podcast&amp;utm_source=a+health+podyssey&amp;utm_t