Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
For the next week I will be headed to Ciudad Romero in the department of Usulatan in El Salvador to assist the local population through their NGO La Coordinadora del Bajo Lempa (Lempa is for the Lempa river which runs near the town). Directed by La Coordinadora, I will work on social justice projects such…
The poor can not afford health care. Health care costs rise above inflation year after year. Serious errors committed by hospitals and physicians are reported by the news media on a daily basis. How can we fix these problems? Can we rely on Uncle Sam to do what’s needed? Will Wilkinson doubts that government intervention…
Kate Steadman’s Healthy Policy blog is hosting the Health Wonk Review #3 for this week. The HWR distills two weeks of health policy blogging to bring readers the best of the best. Topics include: Reform: Whatâs the definition of âisâ? edition Changes are Aâ Comin Medicine and Health Policy From the Unbeaten Health Blogosphere Path…
Economists typically assume that the majority of additional costs employers incur from hiring a worker are reflected in a lower compensation package for the employee. For instance, employees owe payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare on 7.65% (Social Security taxes are limited to earnings below $94,000 in 2006, but Medicare taxes are applied on…
The Kaiser Family Foundation’s State Health Facts website gives a wide variety of statistics detailing health insurance in America. The study finds that there are 45.5 million uninsured non-elderly individuals (16% of the total non-elderly population). Out of this total 4.1 million (9% of the uninsured) are poor children and 12.6 million (28% of the…
Of course they should! Non-profit hospitals treat the poorest patients in the most underserved communities using a bare bones administrative budget…right? According to the New York Times (“Nonprofit Hospitals Face Scrutiny Over Practices“), the traditional view of non-profit hospitals as altruistic institutions may be flawed. The commissioner of internal revenue, Mark W. Everson, said tax…
The American health care system seems ill. Prices for medical services have continued to outpace inflation during recent history. What is the Healthcare Economist’s diagnosis? Simple, its a case of Baumol’s cost disease. Baumol’s cost disease is a phenomenon which appears in industries which have slow productivity growth over time (see “What ails us” in…
Tuberculosis is the world’s deadliest curable, infectious disease. According to the World Health Organization TB report, there were 8.9 million new TB cases in 2003. Over 1.7 million people die of the ailment, 90 percent of them in developing countries. Africa has the highest incidence of TB with 2.8 million cases in 2003, but even…
I have recently completed a paper titled Job Lock: A Literature Review, which has been posted in the ‘Papers by HC Economist‘ page. Here is a brief excerpt from the beginning of the paper. “Three in 10 Americans say they or someone in their household have at some time stayed in a job they wanted…
The NCAA Men’s basketball tournament is almost upon us. Time to fill out your brackets and cheer for your favorite teams. I have filled out my bracket, but as an economist, I can’t do this as any normal person would. I have used some quantitiative measures in order to rank the teams. The teams are…