Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
For researchers who are planning on presenting research posters in the near future, Jane Miller (2007) has an excellent capacity-building article in this month’s edition of the Health Services Research (HSR) journal. Miller’s advice covers all the major facets of the poster presentation: poster design, concise phrasing of statistical methodologies, the narrative to accompany the…
The Reason magazine makes an compelling argument in favor of mandatory private health insurance (“Mandatory Health Insurance Now!“). A subsidy could help all individuals to afford the insurance. Some of the funds for this subsidy could be raised by eliminating the tax-deductibility of health insurance. This program funnels more than $140 billion a year in…
In 2005, approximately 114 million visits were made by Americans to the hospital emergency departments. Of these, more than eighty percent concluded with a discharge and a recommendation for follow-up care. Receiving prompt and adequate post-ER care is imperative for the resolution of many illnesses and temporary disabilities. Is timely care available for these patients?…
Many studies have looked at which variables determine medical utilization rates. Specifically, most of the studies have focused on primary care or general practitioner (GP) visits. A recent study by Nolan (2007) employs panel data from Ireland to reach some new conclusions on this topic. Ireland is an interesting location to preform the study. All…
The Health Wonk Review has been posted at the Health Affairs blog.
Courtesy of Kevin, M.D. blog: an interesting interview with a former drug rep at Eli Lilly employee who sold Zyprexa between 1998 and 2000.
Health decision makers often have to decide whether to adopt a new health care intervention (e.g.: pharmaceuticals, new procedures, etc.) or keep the existing practice. If one assumes that the new intervention has positive but uncertain net benefits over the existing procedure, should the new technology be adopted? A paper by Eckermann and Willan (2007)…
Yesterday, President Bush gave the State of the Union Address. In this post, I 1) analyze Bush’s new health care plan, 2) review some commentary from various blogs on the net, and 3) give a excerpt from the speech which directly relates to health care. Healthcare Economist’s Analysis The heart of the Bush proposal is…
Today, I will review an interesting article by Glied and Zivin (2002) examining how physicians adjust their practice style when the HMO share of patients changes (note: the authors implicitly assume all HMOs pay physicians via capitation). First we will look at the three theoretical models the authors develop. Models 1. Excess capacity model. The…
Here are some inspirational quotations for some motivation at the beginning of your week. “The discipline of writing something down is the first step toward making it happen.” —Lee Iacocca “Success comes to the person who does today what you were thinking about doing tomorrow.” —Unknown