Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
Siegel et al. (2019) present a review of cancer incidence and mortality statistics in American over recent decades. Their key findings were: Over the past decade of data, the cancer incidence rate (2006‐2015) was stable in women and declined by approximately 2% per year in men, whereas the cancer death rate (2007‐2016) declined annually by…
The FDA estimates that 50% of all 3.4 billion worldwide smartphone users have downloaded a health app. Do these apps work? Even if they work for the average patient, will they work for you? And with whom could you discuss your app-based treatment options? To answer these questions, in the future you may need a…
The first Quality of an Historian is to be true & impartial; the next to be interesting. David Hume The same could be said of any researcher or even blogger (at least those bloggers like myself focused on advancing knowledge). I found this quotation in the very interesting book The Infidel and the Professor: David Hume, Adam Smith and the Friendship that Shaped Modern Thought. Very interesting.
Although the high cost of pharmaceuticals is often in the news, these costs are offset by improved health benefits. However, it may not be clear the extent to which new pharmaceutical products lead to improved health at the national level. A paper by Lichtenberg (2018) aims to examine this question looking at the introduction of…
Stand-up economist Yoram Bauman, weighs on how AI will affect to productivity of jokes. Enjoy.
In one of his first acts as California Governor, Gavin Newson has proposed a way to reduce drug price: let California use its size to negotiate directly with pharmaceutical firms. As the N.Y. Times reports: [O]n Monday, Mr. Newsom signed an executive order proposing a plan that would allow California to directly negotiate with drug manufacturers. The…
Super gonorrhoea The cost of H1N1 influenza outbreaks. Do wellness programs save money? Government shutdown’s impact on healthcare “the marginal return to the tough-on-crime stance may be close to zero”
Earlier this year, I reviewed one definition of causality: the Bradford Hill criteria. Now I move from a medical definition causality to one developed by an economist (in fact, an economist from my alma matter). Granger causality basically identifies a variable as causal if: (i) it occurs the outcome of interest and (ii) including past…
An interesting article in the N.Y. Times “Upshot” section by Austin Frakt argues that federal efforts to nudge people towards healthier behaviors may be doomed to fail. A $100 billion dollar health care package…encourages exercise by treating gym memberships as tax-deductible medical expenses…[a]nd it would permit the use of flexible spending accounts and health savings accounts…
Fung et al. (2019) conclude the following based on a 2017 survey of California residents: …19 percent reported that they would not have purchased insurance had there been no penalty. We estimated that premiums would increase by 4–7 percent if these enrollees were not in the risk pool. The percentages of enrollees who would forgo…