NATIONAL REVIEW
Let the Doctors Work
by Joel M. Zinberg
May 7, 2020

Buried in the recent announcement by the Bureau of Economic Analysis that real gross domestic product (GDP) decreased at an annual rate of 4.8 percent in the first quarter of 2020 was a remarkable fact: Nearly half of the GDP decrease was due to reduced spending on health-care services. You read that correctly — in the middle of the worst pandemic in over a century, and after decades of unrelenting expenditure growth, we spent less on medical care. How can one explain this anomaly? It is because Americans, in response to government guidance and fear of an unfamiliar pathogen, are putting off medical care — care that is often essential to their health. READ MORE