End of week Links
Check-out your reading list for the weekend: Mental health services after incarceration. Netflix and pills. The physician’s view on workers comp. Provider consolidation in New England. Should we subsidize telecare services?
Are rural hospital closures becoming a crisis?
Perhaps according to Austin Frakt. He writes in JAMA Forum: In every year since 2011, more hospitals have closed than opened…For example, 15 of the 21 hospitals that closed in 2016 were in rural communities, and since 2010, nearly 90 rural hospitals have done so. Hundreds more are at risk of closure.One source of financial challenges to…
Should the US adopt global budgets for hospitals? Have some states done this already?
While I leave the answer to the first question for another day, the answer to the second question is ‘yes’. Done, Herring and Wu (2019) explain’s Maryland’s approach to global capitation payments for hospitals covering both inpatient and outpatient hospital services. Maryland is the only state that still operates an all‐payer rate‐setting system for hospitals,…
Healthcare Economist named a Top 100 economics blog
The Healthcare Economist was once again named as one of the top 100 economics blogs by Intelligent Economist. In fact, this blog was list first in the “Sub-field Economic Blogs” category (clearly my sub-field is healthcare). Thanks to all my readers and to Intelligent Economist for the award.
Growing health care spending in China
One can expect health care spending in China to grow for two reasons in the coming years. First, with the economy growing, individuals and the government will have more money to spend on health care. Second, China is aging rapidly and older individuals require more health care services. Thus, it should come as no surprise…
End of week links
Variation in health care cost. Sludge. CRISPR and cancer. Does use of nicotine gum or CBD oil affect your insurance rates? Can charter school success be replicated?
Peer effects: Does your perceptions about your peers matter more than your peers’ behavior?
It appears that not only does your friend’s behavior affect your behavior, but your perception of their behavior–independent from their actual behavior–affects your behavior. Want a concrete example of this? A paper by Amialchuk et al. (2019) finds the following: Using a nationally representative dataset, we estimate the effect of misperception about friends’ alcohol, smoking,…
How do you define catastrophic health care costs?
At first this seems like an easy question to answer: catastrophic health care costs mean lots of money. But how do you define a lot? A million dollars? Ten thousand dollars? A hundred dollars? One question is, should catastrophic be measured in absolute or relative terms. For instance, the a ten thousand dollar cost may…
Are open-source approaches to value measurement the wave of the future?
My colleagues Jeroen Jansen, Devin Incerti along with Jeff Curtis think so. In JMCP they write: In the United States, there is an increased interest to understand the value of health technologies. Cost-effectiveness analysis is arguably the most appropriate framework to quantify value and to inform reimbursement decision making regarding medical interventions; however, a thorough…
CBO: Healthcare projected to consume increasing share of federal outlays in next decade
Every year, the Congressional Budget Office projects how the federal budget will look over the coming decade. For the coming decade, the numbers look grim. Federal deficits in CBO’s baseline average $1.2 trillion per year and total $11.6 trillion over the 2020– 2029 period…Those deficits would average 4.4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Other…