Health Care Satellite Account

BEA's Plans

Understanding the changing role of health care in the U.S. economy and its impact on economic growth is critical to addressing many of the important policy issues being raised regarding health care. With this initiative, BEA is improving the accuracy of its core GDP estimates and developing a supplemental set of satellite accounts on health care that will:

• Create common BEA-CMS sets of health expenditure statistics.
• Produce a comprehensive set of health care sector accounts for health care income, expenditure, and product.
• Develop state-of-the-art medical care price and real output measures that better break out the delivery of health care from increases in the price of that care.
• Produce estimates of medical care spending by type of disease that go beyond estimates of spending by provider type.

For details on BEA’s plans, see: Toward a Health Care Satellite Account (PDF)

Completed Work:

• Household Consumption Expenditures for Medical Care: An Alternate Presentation (PDF)
  Ana Aizcorbe, Eli B. Liebman, David M. Cutler, and Allison B. Rosen. Survey of Current Business, June 2012.
• Comparing Commercial Systems for Characterizing Episodes of Care (PDF )
  Allison B. Rosen, Eli Liebman, Ana Aizcorbe, and David M. Cutler. BEA Working Paper (WP2012-7).
• Physician Market Power and Medical-Care Expenditures (PDF )
  Abe Dunn and Adam Hale Shapiro. BEA Working Paper (WP2011-10).
• Geographic Variation in Commercial Medical-Care Expenditures: A Framework for Decomposing Price and Utilization (PDF )
  Abe C. Dunn, Adam Shapiro, and Eli Liebman. BEA Working Paper (WP2011-07).
• “Changing Mix of Medical Care Services: Stylized Facts and Implications for Price Indexes.” (PDF ) Aizcorbe and Nestoriak. Journal of Health Economics, Volume 30, Issue 3, May 2011, Pages 568-574.
  BEA Working Paper (WP2010-08).
• “Medical Care Price Indexes for Patients with Employer-Provided Insurance: Nationally-Representative Estimates from MarketScan Data” (PDF)
  Dunn, Liebman, Pack, Shapiro. BEA Working Paper (WP2010-17)
• “Alternative Price Indexes for Medical Care: Evidence from the MEPS Survey.”
  Aizcorbe, Bradley (BLS), Herauf, Kane, Liebman, Pack, Rozental (BLS). BEA Working Paper (WP2011-01)
• “A Reconciliation of Health Care Expenditures in the National Health Expenditure Accounts and in Gross Domestic Product.” (PDF )
  Caitlin (CMS), Hartman (CMS), Kornfeld (BEA). Survey of Current Business, September 2010.
• “Measuring Health Care Costs of Individuals with Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance in the U.S.: A Comparison of Survey and Claims Data.” (PDF ) Aizcorbe, Liebman, Pack, Cutler, Chernew, Rosen. Statistical Journal of the IAOS 28 (2012) 43–51
  BEA Working Paper (WP2010-06).
• “Price Indexes for Prescription Drugs: A Review of the Issues, ” (PDF ) Aizcorbe and Nestoriak. In The Oxford Handbook of the Economics of the Biopharmaceutical Industry, Danzon and Nicholson, eds. March 2012
  
• “Drug Innovations and Welfare Measures Computed from Market Demand: The Case of Anti-Cholesterol Drugs.” (PDF) Dunn, Abe. Forthcoming: American Economic Journal: Applied Economics
  BEA Working Paper (WP2010-15).

Links:

• BEA-sponsored session at 2007 ASSA meeting
• BEA-sponsored workshop at the National Academies
• Nat. Academies panel report with recommendations for BEA

Contact:

Dr. Ana Aizcorbe, Chief Economist
Ana.aizcorbe@bea.gov
202-606-9948