Bob Fogel on life expectancy and health policy

Chicago Booth School economic historian Bob Fogel writes on how to think about longevity, his thoughts on likely health breakthroughs in the near future and on how to think about health expenditures and health policy. There is wisdom throughout.

I took Bob's class on "business ethics in historical perspective" when I was in graduate school and thoroughly enjoyed it. Despite the title, what it really was about was the general history of ethical movements in the US. That subject matter formed a natural outgrowth of Bob's famous research on slavery and the civil war. I read his second civil war book, Without Consent or Contract, late in graduate school. It changed my views in many ways and also sharpened my sense of the valuable toolkit that economic historians bring to the economics discipline as a whole.