Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
This month, the World Health Organization (WHO) released its annual report on cancer titled Global status report on cancer 2026: the future we choose together. I provide a high level Q&A summary of see key statistics. How many cancer cases were there in 2024? “In 2024, there were 20.6 million new cancer cases worldwide5 (19.5…
That is the title of a Journal of Economic Literature article by Gottlieb and Nicholson (2026). Here is a Q&A summary of their article. What are the defining features of physician competition? The authors argue that competition in the physician market is a two-stage process: “First, potential physicians compete to enter medical school and then…
Do Medicare Advantage enrollees like plans with more prior authorization? On the one han, one would think the answer is a clear ‘no’. However, higher levels of prior authorization could result in lower premiums, a tradeoff many enrollees may prefer. A paper by Marr, Trivedi and Meyers (2026) aims to answer the question using beneficiary…
A paper by Mark Shepard and Jacob Wallace (2026) has a great overview of the Medicaid managed care program. The first question one may have is, how does Medicaid managed care differ from other forms of government procurement. “In standard public procurement—such as contracting for infrastructure projects—the government specifies desired services, solicits bids, selects winners,…
Advice for working in DC. The optimizer’s curse. MDs and friendship. AI models have internal thoughts. The originator of “GOOOAL!!!”
That is the title of a recent paper out in ClinicoEconomics and Outcomes Research with co-authors Jennifer Vaughn, Nadine Zawadzki, Shurui Zhang, Paul Pinkston, and David Wei. The subtitle is A Comparison of Later Generation TKIs versus Imatinib from Patient and Payer Perspectives. The abstract is below: Purpose: To evaluate the financial impact of treating CML…
KFF reports on the increased use of copay accumulators: Oscar Health is one of many commercial health insurers that use what are often called copay accumulator programs to keep funds that are meant to defray patients’ out-of-pocket costs for expensive specialty drugs. Over the past decade, more insurers have adopted such strategies to reduce their prescription…
“I will maintain that there is no comparably important question in economics, because this is the question of human progress. This is the question of human wellbeing over millennia. Everything else about resource allocation, about policy, about macro…everything else is a footnote to this larger question of how new things come into being and how…
Why were COVID trials so fast. Innovation without access? The growing tension in rare disease coverage Why rent control fails Spending growth at the state level Screwworms and flesh-eating bacteria.
Many policymakers are looking for ways to reduce drug spending. Federal policymakers are not the only ones looking at the issue. In recent years, state Prescription Drug Affordability Boards (PDABs) have formed to reduce drug prices. A paper by Barthold et al. (2026) describes the what PDABs are: As of April 2025, 12 states had…