David Cutler

Template:Other uses2 David Matthew Cutler is Otto Eckstein Professor of Applied Economics at Harvard University. He holds a joint appointment in both the economics department and in Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He graduated from Harvard College, summa cum laude, with a degree in Economics, and then joined the Harvard faculty after receiving his Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1991. He served in the administration of Bill Clinton and was senior health care advisor to Barack Obama. From 2003-2008 Cutler was Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences for Social Sciences.

While his work on health economics covers a broad range of subtopics, he is particularly notable for his work on the value of the health care system as a whole. Much of his work argues that the United States has realized good "bang for its buck" by any reasonable measure of the value of a statistical year of life in good health. That is, while health care is extremely expensive, we also place a very high value on documentable health gains. He also argues that we could gain considerably more health for the dollar if reimbursement for care could be tied to the health value of the service instead of the intensity of the service. See his book Your Money or Your Life for a good introduction to David Cutler's views on the United States health care system. The book and Cutler's ideas were the subject of an article in the New York Times Magazine titled The Quality Cure.

Additionally, Cutler's 2003 "Why have Americans become more obese?" discusses rising obesity as an outcome of the revolution in mass food packaging. He includes vacuum packing, improved preservatives, deep freezing, and microwaves as culprits. Consumer prices on items like various frozen foods, soda, and potato chips are increasing at half the rate of fresh fruits and vegetables. This mass preparation makes for lower costs, and more food consumption. Meanwhile, calories expended haven't changed much. Accordingly, Cutler posits that the 20 minute average reduced time of food preparation has resulted in a calorie increase of 100 per day per individual, on average. These extra 100 calories can largely account for a 10-12 lb. weight gain in the American population over the past 20 years.

External links

• David Cutler's faculty webpage at Harvard University
• David Cutler's faculty webpage at the Harvard Kennedy School
• The Quality Cure
• Improving Health Care Quality: Is Medicare a Good Candidate for Pay-for-Performance? Policy Forum by the Cato Institute, November 2, 2006, featuring David Cutler, Dr. Sandra Gadson, Michael F. Cannon and Gail Wilensky, audio and video