Comanor William S, Frech H E, Miller Richard D
Department of Economics, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA.
Int J Health Care Finance Econ. 2006 Mar;6(1):3-23. doi: 10.1007/s10754-006-6863-8.
U.S. health care is often seen as an outlier, with high costs and only middling outcomes. This view implies a household production function for health, with both health care and lifestyle serving as inputs. Building on earlier work by Miller and Frech (2004), we make this argument explicit by estimating a production function from augmented OECD data. This allows us to determine whether the U.S. is literally an outlier; which turns on whether the United States is very far off the production surface. We find that the Unites States is somewhat less productive than the average OECD country, but that a substantial part of the observed difference results from poor lifestyle choices, particularly obesity.
美国医疗保健常常被视为异类，成本高昂但结果却仅处于中等水平。这种观点暗示了健康的家庭生产函数，医疗保健和生活方式均作为投入要素。基于米勒和弗雷奇（2004年）早期的研究成果，我们通过对经合组织扩充数据估计生产函数，使这一观点更加明确。这使我们能够确定美国是否真的是异类；这取决于美国是否远远偏离生产前沿。我们发现，美国的生产率略低于经合组织国家的平均水平，但观察到的差异很大一部分是由于不良的生活方式选择，尤其是肥胖。
