Medical Research and Implementation
At the most direct level, the financial costs of medical research and procedures for improving the health and increasing the longevity of Americans need to be calculated. According to Mohr et al., nearly 50 percent of the increase in health care costs can be attributed to the advances in the use of medical technologies for treating all patients (cited in The Institute for Research on Women and Gender 7). In another research analysis, researchers found that a 2.2 percent annual increase in real per capital health was connected to medical technologies, after discounting the costs that were related to non-technological aspects such as the aging of the population, medical price increases and rising insurance coverage between 1950 and 2000. Essentially, the changes in medical technologies accounted for approximately half of the real growth in health care spending during this period (ôCosts and Benefits of Medical Innovationö 16).
More specifically, Murphy and Topel identified two types of costs that need
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