Healthcare Spending and Efficiency in the United States: Case Study of the Midwest

Healthcare and related matters are of paramount importance for any nation in general and any household in particular. It has been axiomatic for decades that the US spends a great deal regarding healthcare and, on balance, achieves less compared with peer advanced economies. This could suggest at the very least the existence of some forms of inefficiencies across the healthcare system. The search for empirical evidence on this matter is the focus of this paper, which zeroes in on the 12 Midwestern states of the US. With a yearly unbalanced panel covering the 1997-2020 period, VAR-based analyses appear to corroborate the narrative of an inefficient healthcare system in the Midwest when considering three medical outcomes, namely, cancer mortality, heart disease mortality, and infant mortality. It is found as well that the scope of inefficiencies differs based upon the medical outcome considered, with the most severe case noted for infant mortality.