THE GREAT ESCAPE: HEALTH, WEALTH, AND THE ORIGINS OF INEQUALITY, BY ANGUS DEATON (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2013)

Resumen

Health economics, as we understand it today, is a relatively new discipline that has attracted academic attention in the past 30 or 40 years. Once substantial reforms to the public sector began in the 1980s, economic ideas started informing the health sector. Clearly intent on reducing the provision of various types of public services, neoliberal policymakers throughout the world began to apply their brand of economic analysis to the field of health, in an effort to increase private-sector participation. Since the 1980s, the number of countries that use economic analysis tools to improve health outcomes and assess new technologies has grown, and more pharmaceutical companies are routinely making costbenefit assessments to enhance their competitiveness in the drug market...