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Health Care Costs and Fiscal Infirmity - Jotwell: Tax
The natural experiment in question is the difference in health care costs between two cities in Texas: McAllen and El Paso. McAllen is the second-most expensive city in the country for per-person health care costs, behind only Miami, which has much higher labor and living costs. By contrast, El Paso’s health care costs are only one half of McAllen’s. Gawande spends much of the article exploring the various reasons that might explain the difference between the two cities’ health care costs. It turns out that both cities have similar poverty rates, racial and ethnic profiles, high-fat diets, and nearly every other possible factor that could explain a difference in health care costs.
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