The problems of medical care confront us daily: a bureaucracy that makes a trip to the doctor worse than a trip to the dentist, doctors who can't practice medicine the way they choose, more than 40 million people without health insurance. "Medical care is in crisis," we are repeatedly told, and so it is. Barely one in five Americans thinks the medical system works well.Enter David M. Cutler, a Harvard economist who served on President Clinton's health care task force and later advised presidential candidate Bill Bradley. One of the nation's leading experts on the subject, Cutler argues in...

Americans are living longer and staying healthier longer than ever before. Despite the rapid disappearance of pensions and health care benefits for retirees, older people are healthier and better off than they were twenty years ago. In "Health at Older Ages," a distinguished team of economists analyzes the foundations of disability decline, quantifies this phenomenon in economic terms, and proposes what might be done to accelerate future improvements in the health of our most elderly populations.
This breakthrough volume argues that educational attainment, high socioeconomic status, an...