Not only is mortality falling, but the health of cardiovascular disease survivors is improving as well. Over the past two decades, the share of people whose usual activity was limited by ischemic heart disease fell rapidly, and the share with no limitations rose. The percentage of people reporting overall poor health also fell. In this chapter, we focus on this dramatic improvement in cardiovas- cular health and its implications for understanding the medical sector. We direct our attention to heart attacks for several reasons.
Heart attacks are also expensive.
Further, these 2. These numbers are taken from various Health Interview Surveys. Authors' calculations based on data from the National Center for Health Statistics. By analyzing the value of heart attack treatment, we can learn a great deal about the costs and bene- fits of medical care in a situation of rapidly rising spending. Finally, data to analyze heart attack treatments are easier to obtain than are data for other cardiovascular conditions or other medical conditions more generally.