Is American Health Care Uniquely Inefficient? Evidence from Prescription Drugs
利用跨国处方药销售数据，比较美国与澳大利亚、加拿大、瑞士和英国在高低质量药物扩散上的差异，发现美国低质量药物相对更普及，支持了美国医疗体系独特低效的猜想。
Alan Garber and Jonathan Skinner (2008) famously conjectured that the US health care system was “uniquely inefficient” relative to other countries. We test this idea using cross-country data on prescription drug sales newly linked with an arguably objective measure of relative therapeutic benefits, or drug quality. Specifically, we investigate how higher and lower quality drugs diffuse in the US relative to Australia, Canada, Switzerland, and the UK. Our tabulations suggest that lower quality drugs diffuse more in the US relative to high quality drugs compared to each of our four comparison countries--consistent with Garber and Skinner's conjecture.