Research

Economic Quarterly

Fall 1994

Medical Care Price Indexes

Robert F. Graboyes

Our Research Focus: Inflation & Monetary Policy

Topics: Inflation

Since 1950, medical care prices have risen twice as fast as nonmedical prices, as indicated by the CPI and other price indexes. Indexes, however, may overstate price increases in medicine compared to other sectors. Extracting prices from expenditure data is difficult in all service sectors because outputs are hard to define. The problem may be worse in medicine, where technological change is particularly rapid.

View Full Article

Contact Us

Richmond

Amanda L. Kramer
(804) 697-8606

subscriptions
Order Publications

Order single copies or subscribe to Economic Quarterly and other publications from the Federal Reserve System.