Friday Links
ISPOR is next week…IRA is a hot topic. Spending on AI vs. the Manhattan Project. Competition and dating apps. Coverage of UnitedHealth cyberattack Good news Friday.
Impact of Medicare Advantage on skilled nursing facility profitability
How does Medicare Advantage market share impact skilled nursing facility (SNF) profitability? That is the question asked by Marr and Shen (2024). Using data from Medicare SNF cost reports, LTCFocus.org data, and county MA penetration rates, the authors use an ordinary least squares regression with SNF and year fixed effects examining how MA penetration impacts…
Bryan Perry joins FTI’s Center for Healthcare Economics and Policy
In some exciting news, Bryan Perry has joined FTI Consulting’s Center for Healthcare Economics and Policy. Below is an excerpt from the press release. Washington, D.C., May 1, 2024 — FTI Consulting, Inc. (NYSE: FCN) today announced the appointment of economics and litigation expert Bryan Perry as a Senior Managing Director in the Center for Healthcare Economics and Policy…
FDA’s Biosimilars Action Plan
In July 2018, FDA released the Biosimilars Action Plan (BAP), which outlined FDA’s approach for expanding access to biosimilars for the American public. The plan focused on 4 key areas: A recent FDA report reviews some of their accomplishments since then. Most of these efforts revolve around guidance documents, additional staff, education products and websites,…
Is IRA drug price negotiation unconstitutional?
A federal judge says ‘no’. Endpoints reports: A New Jersey federal judge on Monday tossed cases brought by Johnson & Johnson and Bristol Myers Squibb against the Inflation Reduction Act, another victory for the law while Medicare works through the first year of price negotiations with industry. In a summary judgment, Judge Zahid Quraishi ruled…
Impact of Zero Tolerance Laws
According to the 2019 NSDUH survey, 27.7 percent of 18-22 year olds who are not enrolled in college full-time and 33.0% of 18-22 year old full-time college students reported binge drinking in the past month. Should society impose stricter restrictions on drugs and alcohol for younger individuals? On the one hand, drugs and alcohol harm…
Value-based payment flaws
While CMS has a target of getting 100% of Medicare beneficiaries into value-based payment (VBP) programs–such as accountable care organizations–by the end of the decade, implementing VBP in practice will be challenging. An editorial by Navathe et al. (2024) in Health Affairs provides some key considerations. Providers forego certain revenue for uncertain ‘bonus’ payments. “One…
Do patients value improvements in progression-free survival?
Progression-free survival (PFS) is a surrogate endpoint is defined as follows (by ChatGPT): In essence, PFS refers to the length of time during a clinical study or treatment regimen where a patient’s disease doesn’t worsen or progress. For instance, in cancer research, it measures the time from the start of treatment until the cancer shows…
What would happen if we eliminated medical debt?
Medical debt in the U.S. is a major problem. While over 90% of individuals have health insurance, many people are uninsured and even those with insurance may be liable to high deductibles and copayments. A Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) analysis uses data from Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) and finds that: …20 million…
Links
LLM approach expert levels in ophthalmology. Price controls in health care (Argentina) Will bird flu (H5N1) animal pandemic spread to humans? Lex Fridman interview with Mark Cuban (with discussion of Cost Plus Drugs) Spotlight on Medicare’s Chronic Care Management program.