Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
Want some more information on the presidential candidates views on healthcare reform? The Healthcare 08 website has an interesting “PoliGraph” showing where the candidates stand. Candidates are characterized according how government driven and how important health care issues are. The graphs include issues such as: overall health care reform, drug prices, the uninsured, and stem…
The latest special issue of Health Economics is very interesting. It looks at healthcare cost and quality metrics across nine European countries using clinical vignettes from the HealthBasket dataset. The nine countries included in the project were: Denmark, England, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, The Netherlands, Poland, and Spain. The vignettes were used in order to…
An interesting article (“Sudden Death…“) at the Covert Rationing blog addresses the poor care given to cardiac patients in hospitals. Dr. Rich states that: “…hospitalized patients who have cardiac arrest (sudden loss of cardiac function due to the onset of a heart arrhythmia known as ventricular fibrillation) are often not receiving defibrillation (an electrical shock…
Who has the best Economics blog of 2008? The Bayesian Heresy makes their selections. Topping the list is the UCSD professor Jim Hamilton’s Econbrowser blog. In 2006, the Bayesian Heresy named the Healthcare Economist as the #2 Specialized Economics blog.
Richard Posner and Gary Becker, two preeminent economists, discuss some of the presidential candidate’s plans for healthcare reform. Posner laments that the U.S. spends 16% of GDP on healthcare, but only has 37th best healthcare system according to the World Health Organization. What is to be done? Most candidates promise to reduce costs and increase…
Two years ago, the Healthcare Economist blog was born (first blog post). While readership was slow at first, over the last 6 months of 2007 this blog averaged over 12,000 unique readers per month. I want to thank these loyal readers for your support, commentary and timely criticisms. I aim to bring more quality information…
According to the Wall Street Journal (“Flat Tax Fred“), Presidential-candidate Fred Thompson has recently proposed instituting a flat tax in the United States “…with two tax rates of 10% and 25%.” One country has already beat Thompson to the punch: Russia. In 2001, Russia enacted a flat tax rate of 13%. The reform has been…
Which country’s citizens believe that their medical system needs a complete overhaul? According to a a study published in Health Affairs (“…Adults’ Health Care Experiences In Seven Countries, 2007“), one third of Americans believe that we need to “rebuild completely” our health care system. Minor Changes Needed Fundamental Changes Needed Rebuild Completely HC Spending per…
The latest edition of the Cavalcade of Risk has been posted at Julie Ferguson’s Worker’s Comp Insider.
How do we measure the financial burden of elderly obesity? At first this seems like an easy question to answer. Find the average medical spending of the obese elderly and compare that to the spending of an elderly individual of healthy weight. Yet causation is difficult to show. True, it is possible that the obese…