Donald Cutler
Biographic Data
| ID | 254237 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Donald Cutler |
| GIVEN NAMES | Donald |
| FAMILY NAME | Cutler |
| SIGNATURE | CUTLER D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Harvard University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4949-8917 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 66 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 659 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 66 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1969 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Can Fair Share Policies Expand Neighborhood Choice? Evidence From Bypassing Exclusionary Zoning Under Massachusetts Chapter 40B
Opening up neighborhoods that offer greater opportunities for social mobility to low- and moderate-income households remains a challenge in the United States. Exclusionary zoning practices act as a barrier to current efforts by restricting the supply of affordable housing. In this paper, we examine whether fair share policies that seek to bypass these restrictive zoning practices offer one potential solution. Focusing on Massachusetts Chapter 40B…
Prescription for Division—Healing the Growing Gap in Physician Trust
This JAMA Forum discusses the erosion of physician trust after the COVID-19 pandemic and provides short- and long-term suggestions for repairing the patient-physician relationship
The Worst Piece of Health Care Legislation Ever
This JAMA forum discusses the cuts to US health care spending in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and their impacts on Medicare and Medicaid recipients, physicians, and hospitals, particularly those in rural areas
Trump’s Most Important Health Policy May Be at the Border
This JAMA Forum discusses immigration in the context of the health care workforce, the potential negative effects from a reduced supply of workers, and potential policy options
Ways to Save Money in Health Care
This JAMA Forum discusses ideas for saving money in health care such as reducing the need for care, reducing excessive prices, and shifting to lower-cost practices
The Pathology of US Health Care—The Example of Weight Loss Medications
This JAMA Forum discusses the cost of newly approved weight loss medications in the US compared with other countries and provides arguments for why these medications should be more available for individuals in the US and covered by more insurers
Financial Games in Health Care—Doing Well Without Doing Good
This JAMA Forum discusses dimensions of financial manipulation in health care and highlights policies that might address it
The New Role of Private Investment in Health Care Delivery
This JAMA Forum discusses the good and bad of innovation in health care delivery, tax policy, an escrow account for failure, and state monitoring
What Artificial Intelligence Means for Health Care
This JAMA Forum discusses 5 observations about the possible effects of artificial intelligence on medicine
Jama Health Forum Peer Reviewers in 2022
Health System Change in the Wake of Covid-19
This JAMA Forum discusses resiliency, telehealth, the health care labor force, and public health in the context of the health system changes occurring since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic
Health Care in a Time of Deficit Concern
This JAMA Forum discusses some guidelines for discussing deficit reduction and suggests 3 principles for keeping the rates of health insurance coverage high, using averages in an unaverage world, and distinguishing between cost shifting and cost cutting
Challenges for the Beleaguered Health Care Workforce During Covid-19
Two years after it first appeared, COVID-19 continues to affect the population's health and the world economy. The good news is that recent waves of COVID-19 appear less likely to cause severe cases of disease compared with prior waves. As the health situation has improved, the economy has recovered as well-though only partially. A tremendous amount of dislocation remains, and working through the economic situation will be challenging
Jama Health Forum Peer Reviewers in 2021
Medicare Enters the Pharmaceutical Purchasing Business
The recently passed Inflation Reduction Act made fundamental changes to federal health and climate policy. The law was unexpected and unusually broad. Barely a week before the Senate passed the bill, there was no sign of pending legislation. Three weeks
The Costs of Long Covid
More than 6 million people have died from COVID-19 worldwide, including nearly 1 million in the US.1 But mortality is not the only adverse consequence of COVID-19. Many survivors suffer long-term impairment, officially termed postacute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection and commonly called long COVID
Health Workforce Issues More Conspicuous After Onset of Covid-19
This JAMA Forum discusses the problems facing the health care workforce in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, including a shortage of workers and the challenge of increasing wages, and highlights issues that policy makers and leaders may consider to address these problems
Building Health Care Better Means Reining in Costs
President Biden has promised an economic plan to Build Back Better. After the disaster wrought by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, that is absolutely necessary. But rebuilding involves more than just repairing the damage from the virus itself. The US economy had glaring weak points before COVID-19, and President Biden will need to address those flaws. Of necessity, this will take the president into the economics of health care
Which Way Will Biden Go on Health Care
The Biden administration has one of the boldest agendas in decades. During President Biden's first 2 months in office, the administration passed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan (ARP). The Biden administration has proposed a $2 trillion infrastructure plan. And on deck is a $1 to $2 trillion plan to support families. On issue after issue, the Biden administration is going big: massive tax credits for low-and middle-income individuals; enorm…
How Covid-19 Changes the Economics of Health Care
Eighteen months after SARS-CoV-2 arrived in the US, the coronavirus continues to affect every aspect of society. The health effects of the pandemic have been enormous-and unfortunately, the economic implications have been as well. Overall employment is still 7.6 million workers short of prepandemic forecasts, and economic output remains below the expected trend
When Innovation Goes Wrong
The fourfold increase in opioid deaths between 2000 and 2017 rivals even the COVID-19 pandemic as a health crisis for America. Why did it happen? Measures of demand for pain relief – physical pain and despair – are high and in many cases rising, but their increase was nowhere near as large as the increase in deaths. The primary shift is in supply, primarily of new forms of allegedly safer narcotics. These new pain relievers flowed in greater volu…
New Rules for the Pandemic Era
Coronavirus disease 2019 is not the world's first pandemic, and it is unlikely to be the last
Where Health Improvement Lags in Recent Decades—Pain and Mental Health
How Will Covid-19 Affect the Health Care Economy
Coronavirus disease 2019 has created an economic crisis alongside a health care crisis
The Birth and Growth of the Social Insurance State
Harvard Public Finance Seminar and workshop for their comments and suggestions. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City or of the Federal Reserve System. Johnson
The Rise and Decline of the American Ghetto
This paper examines segregation in American cities from 1890 to 1990. We divide the century into three time periods. From 1890 to 1940, ghettos were born as blacks migrated to urban areas and cities developed vast expanses filled with nearly exclusively black housing. From 1940 to 1970, black migration continued and ghettos expanded. Since 1970, there has been a decline in segregation as blacks have moved to suburban areas and central cities have…
The Determinants of Mortality
The pleasures of life are worth nothing if one is not alive to experience them. Through the twentieth century in the United States and other high-income countries, growth in real incomes was accompanied by a historically unprecedented decline in mortality rates that caused life expectancy at birth to grow by nearly 30 years. In the years just after World War II, life expectancy gaps between countries were falling across the world. Poor countries …
The role of public health improvements in health advances
Mortality rates in the United States fell more rapidly during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries than in any other period in American history. This decline coincided with an epidemiological transition and the disappearance of a mortality “penalty” associated with living in urban areas. There is little empirical evidence and much unresolved debate about what caused these improvements, however. In this article, we report the causal i…
Why Have Americans Become More Obese
Americans have become considerably more obese over the past 25 years. This increase is primarily the result of consuming more calories. The increase in food consumption is itself the result of technological innovations which made it possible for food to be mass prepared far from the point of consumption, and consumed with lower time costs of preparation and cleaning. Price changes are normally beneficial, but may not be if people have self-contro…
When are ghettos bad? Lessons from immigrant segregation in the United States
When does education matter? The protective effect of education for cohorts graduating in bad times
Autopsy on an Empire
Male life expectancy at birth fell by over six years in Russia between 1989 and 1994. Many other countries of the former Soviet Union saw similar declines, and female life expectancy fell as well. Using cross-country and Russian household survey data, we assess six possible explanations for this upsurge in mortality. Most find little support in the data: the deterioration of the health care system, changes in diet and obesity, and material depriv…
The Birth and Growth of the Social Insurance State
The (Paper)Work of Medicine
This paper draws on international evidence on medical spending to examine what the United States can learn about making its healthcare system more efficient. We focus primarily on understanding contemporaneous differences in the level of spending, generally from the 2000s. Medical spending differs across countries either because the price of services differs (for example, a coronary bypass surgery operation may cost more in the United States than…
Valuing Regulations Affecting Addictive or Habitual Goods
The analysis of regulations affecting addictive or habitual goods has drawn considerable controversy. Some studies have suggested that such regulations have only small welfare benefits, as consumers value these goods despite health benefits from quitting, while other studies suggest that information or behavioral problems make existing consumption decisions a poor guide to welfare evaluation. We examine potential utility offsets to health benefit…
US Trends in Quality-Adjusted Life Expectancy From 1987 to 2008
Objectives. We used data from multiple national health surveys to systematically track the health of the US adult population. Methods. We estimated trends in quality-adjusted life expectancy (QALE) from 1987 to 2008 by using national mortality data combined with data on symptoms and impairments from the National Medical Expenditure Survey (1987), National Health Interview Survey (1987, 1994–1995, 1996), Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (1992, 199…
Are We Finally Winning the War on Cancer
President Nixon declared what came to be known as the "war on cancer" in 1971 in his State of the Union address. At first the war on cancer went poorly: despite a substantial increase in resources, age-adjusted cancer mortality increased by 8 percent between 1971 and 1990, twice the increase from 1950 through 1971. However, between 1990 and 2004, age-adjusted cancer mortality fell by 13 percent. This drop translates into an increase in life expec…
Training professionals to work with the chronically mentally ill
The Benefits of Risk Factor Prevention in Americans Aged 51 Years and Older
Objectives. We assessed the potential health and economic benefits of reducing common risk factors in older Americans. Methods. A dynamic simulation model tracked a national cohort of persons 51 and 52 years of age to project their health and medical spending in prevention scenarios for diabetes, hypertension, obesity, and smoking. Results. The gain in life span from successful treatment of a person aged 51 or 52 years for obesity would be 0.85 y…
The Economic Impacts of the Tobacco Settlement
Recent litigation against the major tobacco companies culminated in a master settlement agreement (MSA) under which the participating companies agreed to compensate most states for Medicaid expenses. Here the terms of the settlement are outlined and its economic implications analyzed using data from Massachusetts. The financial compensation to Massachusetts (and other states) under the MSA is substantial. However, this compensation is dwarfed by …
A Guide to Health Care Reform
There are four rationales for health care reform: increasing the efficiency of health delivery; reforming the market for health insurance; providing universal coverage; and reducing the federal deficit. These goals are reflected in most reform proposals. Achieving these goals involves several problems, however. Paying for universal coverage may lead to labor supply or demand reductions. In addition, reform involves large federal risks that must b…
From a force into a service? The police, racial attacks, and equal opportunities
The Religious Situation
The Religious Situation
Training professionals to work with the chronically mentally ill
From a force into a service? The police, racial attacks, and equal opportunities
A Guide to Health Care Reform
There are four rationales for health care reform: increasing the efficiency of health delivery; reforming the market for health insurance; providing universal coverage; and reducing the federal deficit. These goals are reflected in most reform proposals. Achieving these goals involves several problems, however. Paying for universal coverage may lead to labor supply or demand reductions. In addition, reform involves large federal risks that must b…
Does Public Insurance Crowd out Private Insurance?
The cost of expanding public sector health programs depends critically on the extent to which public eligibility will cover just the uninsured, or will crowd out existing private insurance coverage. We estimate the extent of crowd-out arising from the expansions of Medicaid to pregnant women and children over the 1987–1992 period. We estimate that approximately 50 percent of the increase in Medicaid coverage was associated with a reduction in pri…
Are Ghettos Good or Bad
Spatial separation of racial and ethnic groups may theoretically have positive or negative effects on the economic performance of those groups. We examine the effects of segregation on outcomes for blacks in schooling, employment, and single parenthood. We find that blacks in more segregated areas have significantly worse outcomes than blacks in less segregated areas. We control for the endogeneity of location choice using instruments based on po…
The Rise and Decline of the American Ghetto
This paper examines segregation in American cities from 1890 to 1990. We divide the century into three time periods. From 1890 to 1940, ghettos were born as blacks migrated to urban areas and cities developed vast expanses filled with nearly exclusively black housing. From 1940 to 1970, black migration continued and ghettos expanded. Since 1970, there has been a decline in segregation as blacks have moved to suburban areas and central cities have…
The Economic Impacts of the Tobacco Settlement
Recent litigation against the major tobacco companies culminated in a master settlement agreement (MSA) under which the participating companies agreed to compensate most states for Medicaid expenses. Here the terms of the settlement are outlined and its economic implications analyzed using data from Massachusetts. The financial compensation to Massachusetts (and other states) under the MSA is substantial. However, this compensation is dwarfed by …
Walking the Tightrope on Medicare Reform
A central controversy in the debate about Medicare is whether the program spends too much money or whether instead it should be expanded to cover more. I consider the value of increased Medicare spending. I argue that on average Medicare spending is worth it: the health gains brought by medicare have been greater than their cost. At the margin, however, services are overused and have low value. Medicare reforms need to promote the high average va…
Why Have Americans Become More Obese
Americans have become considerably more obese over the past 25 years. This increase is primarily the result of consuming more calories. The increase in food consumption is itself the result of technological innovations which made it possible for food to be mass prepared far from the point of consumption, and consumed with lower time costs of preparation and cleaning. Price changes are normally beneficial, but may not be if people have self-contro…
The Birth and Growth of the Social Insurance State
Ethnicity, Social Mobility, and Public Policy
This major comparative study of the social mobility of ethnic minorities in the US and UK argues that social mobility must be understood as a complex and multi-dimensional phenomenon, incorporating the wealth and income of groups, but also their political power and social recognition. Written by leading sociologists, economists, political scientists, geographers, and philosophers in both countries, the volume addresses issues as diverse as educat…
The role of public health improvements in health advances
Mortality rates in the United States fell more rapidly during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries than in any other period in American history. This decline coincided with an epidemiological transition and the disappearance of a mortality “penalty” associated with living in urban areas. There is little empirical evidence and much unresolved debate about what caused these improvements, however. In this article, we report the causal i…
Autopsy on an Empire
Male life expectancy at birth fell by over six years in Russia between 1989 and 1994. Many other countries of the former Soviet Union saw similar declines, and female life expectancy fell as well. Using cross-country and Russian household survey data, we assess six possible explanations for this upsurge in mortality. Most find little support in the data: the deterioration of the health care system, changes in diet and obesity, and material depriv…
Education and Health
There is a large and persistent association between education and health. In this paper, we review what is known about this link. We first document the facts about the relationship between education and health. The education 'gradient' is found for both health behaviors and health status, though the former does not fully explain the latter. The effect of education increases with increasing years of education, with no evidence of a sheepskin effec…
The Determinants of Mortality
The pleasures of life are worth nothing if one is not alive to experience them. Through the twentieth century in the United States and other high-income countries, growth in real incomes was accompanied by a historically unprecedented decline in mortality rates that caused life expectancy at birth to grow by nearly 30 years. In the years just after World War II, life expectancy gaps between countries were falling across the world. Poor countries …
Trends in the prevalence and mortality of cognitive impairment in the United States
BACKGROUND: Recent medical, demographic, and social trends might have had an important impact on the cognitive health of older adults. To assess the impact of these multiple trends, we compared the prevalence and 2-year mortality of cognitive impairment (CI) consistent with dementia in the United States in 1993 to 1995 and 2002 to 2004. METHODS: We used data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a nationally representative population-based …
The Gap Gets Bigger
In this paper we examine educational disparities in mortality and life expectancy among non-Hispanic blacks and whites in the 1980s and 1990s. Despite increased attention and substantial dollars directed to groups with low socioeconomic status, within race and gender groups, the educational gap in life expectancy is rising, mainly because of rising differentials among the elderly. With the exception of black males, all recent gains in life expect…
Is the Melting Pot Still Hot? Explaining the Resurgence of Immigrant Segregation
This paper uses decennial Census data to examine the residential integration of the foreign born in the United States between 1910 and 2000. Immigrant segregation declined in the first part of the century, but has been rising over the past few decades. Recent immigrants tend to hail from countries with greater cultural distinctions from U.S. natives, whether economic, racial, or linguistic. These factors explain much of the increase in segregatio…
When are ghettos bad? Lessons from immigrant segregation in the United States
The Impact of Symptoms and Impairments on Overall Health in US National Health Data
OBJECTIVE: To assess the effects on overall self-rated health of the broad range of symptoms and impairments that are routinely asked about in national surveys. DATA: We use data from adults in the nationally representative Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) 2002 with validation in an independent sample from MEPS 2000. METHODS: Regression analysis is used to relate impairments and symptoms to a 100-point self-rating of general health status.…
Are We Finally Winning the War on Cancer
President Nixon declared what came to be known as the "war on cancer" in 1971 in his State of the Union address. At first the war on cancer went poorly: despite a substantial increase in resources, age-adjusted cancer mortality increased by 8 percent between 1971 and 1990, twice the increase from 1950 through 1971. However, between 1990 and 2004, age-adjusted cancer mortality fell by 13 percent. This drop translates into an increase in life expec…
Forecasting the Effects of Obesity and Smoking on U.S. Life Expectancy
BACKGROUND: Although increases in obesity over the past 30 years have adversely affected the health of the U.S. population, there have been concomitant improvements in health because of reductions in smoking. Having a better understanding of the joint effects of these trends on longevity and quality of life will facilitate more efficient targeting of health care resources. METHODS: For each year from 2005 through 2020, we forecasted life expectan…
Understanding differences in health behaviors by education
The Benefits of Risk Factor Prevention in Americans Aged 51 Years and Older
Objectives. We assessed the potential health and economic benefits of reducing common risk factors in older Americans. Methods. A dynamic simulation model tracked a national cohort of persons 51 and 52 years of age to project their health and medical spending in prevention scenarios for diabetes, hypertension, obesity, and smoking. Results. The gain in life span from successful treatment of a person aged 51 or 52 years for obesity would be 0.85 y…
Medicine (43 works) · Economics (35 works) · Political science (26 works) · Health care (25 works) · Economic growth (24 works) · Healthcare Policy and Management (23 works) · Environmental health (21 works) · Population (21 works) · Business (18 works) · Demography (17 works)