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The introduction of modern medicine into developing societies is an important topic for social-scientific analysis. Here I draw upon modernization theory to illuminate this topic. Using Peter Berger's notion of "carriers of modernity," I discuss health care as such a carrier. Compared with premodern modes of health care, modern health care has a calculable, "commodity" character. Its production has become a major and increasingly systematized sector of the economy. In addition to its manifest clinical benefits, health care conveys the symbolic meanings of modernity. It participates in the broad though uneven passage of technology and values from Western societies to metropolitan areas in developing societies and thence to the hinterland. Health care as the focus of demodernization strains is also examined, through case examples drawn from Amish and Islamic contexts.

With the United States and other developed nations spending as much as 14 percent of their GDP on medical care, economists and policy analysts are asking what these countries are getting in return. Yet it remains frustrating and difficult to measure the productivity of the medical care service industries.This volume takes aim at that problem, while taking stock of where we are in our attempts to solve it. Much of this analysis focuses on the capacity to measure the value of technological change and other health care innovations. A key finding suggests that growth in health care spending has co