Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
Jason has insurance and his brother Nosaj does not. Jason utilizes more medical services than Nosaj. Is this situation occuring because Jason is truly sicker than Nosaj (adverse selection), or is this because since Jason has insurance, medical services are cheaper for him than Nosaj (moral hazard)? Disentangling the problems of moral hazard and adverse selection…
Health Wonk Review #15 is posted at Henry Stern’s InsureBlog. FYI: While Mr. Stern refers to me as Dr. Shafrin, I have not yet completed my PhD and thus a title of “Mister” is the only one I can currently claim.
The BBC reports that patients in the EU may soon have the right to go to any EU country for medical treatment. In a September 5th article (“EU chief…“), one can see a future of medical tourism in the EU. Many EU members have argued that medical services fall outside the scope of the single…
Daniel Polsky and Sean Nicholson have two papers which aim to look at employer health insurance offerings. The first [Polsky, Nicholson (2004)] tries to estimate the factors driving the cost differences between HMO plans and non-HMO (eg: PPO, indemnity) plans. The authors deconstruct the cost differences into three factors: Utilization Effect: this occurs if individuals…
How do you measure the level of corruption in a nation? Transparency International uses a Perceptions Index to rank the corruption of each nation. The problem with this index is that it does not give the true corruption of officials, but the resulting corruption from a mix of personal corruption and the effective enforcement of…
On Thursday I mentioned the Treasury Department’s plan to turn over some of the collection of delinquent taxes to private companies. In most modern societies of the Western world, tax collectors are salaried employees of the state. This was not always the case. A 2006 paper by Cosgel and Miceli aims to create a model…
An interesting article from The Sunday Herald of Scotland: Doctorsâ and nursesâ leaders have rejected proposals that would allow members of the public to be directly elected to health boards over concerns it will make the NHS âtoo politicisedâ?. Bill Butler, Labour MSP for Glasgow Anniesland, introduced the Health Board Elections Bill to Holyrood in…