Consider carefully the following quotation:

“[E]conomists seem always to talk about the cost of medical care, as if that kind of spending were a bad thing. After all, where does the money go?

To doctors, nurses, and the makers of medical supplies. Don’t they buy diapers and pasta and cars? Would the nation be better off with more boom boxes and less penicillin, more nail polish and less antibacterial ointment? What difference does it make how money is spent, as long as it changes hands and results in employment?”

[ New York Times Magazine , December 12, 1993, p. 28].

a. Do economists view spending on health care as a “bad thing”?

b. The last sentence in the quotation suggests a criterion for evaluating spending on health care. What criterion would an economist use?