Larry Summers

In a keynote address on November 30, 2016 at the World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH) in Doha, Qatar, Summers talked about the Future of Aid for Health. Summers said, “I have always believed that economics is a moral science because it is so centrally involved with choices that directly affect human well being.  And cancer at age 30 reinforced for me that no choices centrally affect human well being as those involving health. Economics is defined as ‘the study of the allocation of scarce resources among competing ends.’  Few if any resources allocation choices are as consequencial as those involved with health care. I have become convinced  that even as we fight for increases in global health aid, there is a need for a major reorientation of the global aid for health effort away from financing service delivery in individual countries and towards global priorities.”