Among wealthy countries, levels of
pharmaceutical consumption vary widely. Does greater consumption contribute to better
health? If so, can that effect be measured? Answers to those questions would be valuable to policymakers in the health care industry and in government, but the questions are difficult to address. To begin with, analysts must distinguish the health benefits of drug consumption from the benefits of all other forms of health care. The authors of this book undertake that task and analyze data from a sample of twenty-one countries to isolate and measure the health effects of
pharmaceutical consumption. Their results show that the use of pharmaceuticals leads to significantly longer lives,
especially for those at middle age and beyond.
H. E. Frech III is a professor of economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an adjunct scholar of AEI. Richard D. Miller Jr. is a research analyst with the Center for Naval Analyses in Alexandria, Virginia.
Many international studies of health care are available, especially in the member-countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Most of those studies have responded to cost-containment problems, and therefore the vast majority have focused on the determinants of health care expenditures.