The real cost of health improvements has fallen for 80 years, not risen

Economists built a model to track health and wealth over the last two centuries. They found that the real cost of health improvements has fallen by 2.5% each year since 1940, even as sticker prices rose.

Everyone thinks healthcare costs too much and just keeps getting more expensive. This paper suggests that if you account for how much better health outcomes have become, the actual cost of getting healthier has steadily dropped for 80 years. It also points to public spending on health research during World War II as a key driver for the entire modern health sector.