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David Cutler

David Cutler

American economist

Sep 3, 2026

5:46
Why is it so hard to make health care in the U.S. cheaper without compromising care access quality?
5:52
Yes.
5:52
So a couple of points.
5:53
One is technologically it's feasible to do.
5:56
We know you can make health care cheaper and better.
5:58
So it's not a question of impossibility.
6:01
It's complicated in part because it's not just a single thing.

38 MINS LATER

44:03
Thank you.
16:42
And so how much of this is just in a sense how we're sort of managing our own science as opposed to, in the rest of your story, as if new science is available broadly and we're just making use of all of it?
16:57
Maybe I'll start off, and then Lev can chime in on things.
17:00
The pharmaceutical issue is so interesting because it picks up so many of the themes of this.
17:05
So if you go back to 2000, year 2000, the big blockbuster drugs at the time were mental health drugs, things like for depression, anxiety, and so on, and pain medications, you know, opioids.
17:22
This was the sort of era of the opioids and so on.
17:25
We wrote, we, in this case being you, wrote a lot how these drugs were overused.
17:30
They were used in situations without clinical testing.

7 MINS LATER

24:24
I wanted to give you a second to actually kind of close us out with sort of your view about where this is all headed.

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