Health, Medical Care, and Economic Crisis

On December 1, 2008, the National Bureau of Economic Research declared that the U.S. economy had been in recession since December 2007. The number of Americans seeking unemployment compensation has reached levels unmatched since 1983, when we were suffering the worst recession since the Great Depression. Intuition suggests that the fear or experience of job loss, coupled with the declining value of homes and investments, makes many of us anxious, causes us to reduce discretionary spending (including that on medical care), and distracts us from taking preventive measures. Many physicians may therefore assume that our economic crisis will increase the . . .