Quotation of the Day
Thought can be lofty without being elegant, but to the extent it lacks elegance it will have less effect on others. Force without finesse is mere mass. Fernando Pessoa from The Book of Disquiet
Friday Links
AZ/J&J resume COVID-19 trials. Nature and Predictors of Response Changes in Modified-Delphi Panels. Thanksgiving and COVID-19 risks. Misleading maps? Average annual premium for a family of four is $21,342.
Why doesn’t the US have nationalized health care?
This is one of the main topics explored by the interesting book Remedy and Reaction by Paul Starr. The U.S. has gotten close to national health insurance programs a number of times. One of the first times was in New York after World War I. The one state where compulsory health insurance came close to…
FDA’s use of real-world data
The 21st Century Cures Act required the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) establish a program for evaluating the use of real-world data (RWD) to support the approval of new indications for drugs. Real-world data is typically data from either health insurance claims, electronic health records (EHRs), patient registries, or mobile devices. But how has FDA…
Health systems seize patients home equity to pay medical bills
University of Virginia Health System (UVA Health) has gone after patients’ homes to pay for medical bills. Kaiser Health News reports: UVA Health and other medical systems rarely force the sale of a home to claim money. Instead, they wait for families to refinance or sell, taking their cut at the settlement table. But with…
What makes a great economist?
From John Maynard Keynes’ Essays in Biography: The study of economics does not seem to require any specialized gifts of an unusually high order. Is it not, intellectually regarded, a very easy subject compared with the higher branches of philosophy and pure science? Yet good, or even competent, economists are the rarest of birds. An…
Links
Trump vs. Biden: Impact on the deficit How does mental illness impact COVID-19 mortality rates? 11pt font. Physicians on proposed changes to Medicare Physician Fee Schedule. Shakespeare’s greatest villain Half of black adults won’t get a COVID-19 vaccine. Remdesivir final trial findings.
HTA criteria used to evaluate diagnostics
When evaluating a new diagnostic, HTA agencies must assess two separate issues: analytical and clinical validity. Analytical validity basically indicates whether the test works; is it able to accurately predicts the presence or absence of a particular biomarker of interest. Clinical validity is whether the test matters in clinical practice. It could be the case…
2020 Economics Nobel Prize: Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson
Congratulations to Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson for the 2020 Nobel Prize in Economics. Below is an excerpt from the press release. Using auction theory, researchers try to understand the outcomes of different rules for bidding and final prices, the auction format. The analysis is difficult, because bidders behave strategically, based on the available information. They…
COVID-19 impact on small businesses: October 2020 Update
Results from a survey titled “Coronavirus Impact and Recovery of the Small Businesses Economy“, which has collected responses from over 520,000 business owners in the US and Canada. Some general positive trends, but still over 20% of small business owners have concerns of their financial reserves running out and nearly 20% are concerned that the…