Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
According to my post yesterday, it may seem like the answer is ‘yes’. The US spends by far the most money per person and the largest share of its economy on health care. While cross-country comparisons often grab the headlines, a New England Journal of Medicine Perspective by Katharine Baicker and Amitabh Chandra argues that…
We all know that health care spending per person in the US is highest among all countries. But are these results consistent across age groups? That is the question posed by Papanicolas et al. (2020). Using 2015 OECD data from the US and 7 other high-income countries (i.e., Australia, Canada, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Switzerland,…
Telemedicine and video-conferencing are helping to bridge the gap in access to care during the COVID-19 pandemic. These approaches, however, only work if patients have access to the technology needed to engage in telemedicine or videoconference visits. A paper by Roberts and Mehrota (2020) uses data from the 2018 American Community Survey (ACS) and finds…
COVID-19 is a global pandemic and finding a vaccine for COVID-19 would be a boon to societal. The value would be enormous. One study found that the value would be more than 1.1% of GDP. Since global GDP is $87.7 trillion, the value of a vaccine would be nearly $1 trillion. In a recent colloquium…
Can hydroxychloroquine prevent COVID-19? Clinical trials during COVID-19. Specialist compensation in ACOs. Moral hazard in the Netherland health insurance system? Where do children play?
President Trump signed 4 executive orders on drug pricing on July 24, 2020. How are they likely to affect drugs prices? Passing along rebates to patients The one of the executive orders mandates that rebates go to reduce patient cost sharing: These middlemen — health plan sponsors and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) — negotiate significant…
That is according to a Health Affairspaper by So Yoon Sim et al. (2020). We estimated economic benefits using cost-of-illness and value-of-a-statistical-life approaches and combined this estimation with immunization program costs to derive the return on investment from immunization programs against ten pathogens for ninety-four low- and middle-income countries for the period 2011–30. Using the…
That is based on an event study approach from a recent Health Affairs article by Lyu and Wehby (2020). Specifically, Mandating face mask use in public is associated with a decline in the daily COVID-19 growth rate by 0.9, 1.1, 1.4, 1.7, and 2.0 percentage points in 1–5, 6–10, 11–15, 16–20, and 21 or more…
Wear a mask. Election forecast uncertainty. Baby born after uterus transplant. Organ sales. Will pandemic lower health insurance premiums?
That is the title of a helpful video from Nicholas Lattimer of University of Sheffield. You can view all his videos here.