Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
Today, my paper titled “Operating on commission: How physician financial incentives affect surgery rates” was accepted for publication in the journal Health Economics. A summary of the paper’s findings is below. This paper employs a nationally representative, household-based dataset in order to test how the compensation method of both specialists and primary care providers…
The Economist magazine has a listing of the eight up-and-coming economists. Below is a list of their names and some commentary if applicable. Amy Finkelstein. Dr. Finkelstein researches in the public and health economics fields. I have featured here work multiple times on this blog (see here, here, here, here and here). Jesse Shapiro. I…
One of the perennial questions of interest for health services researchers how to pay for health care. A paper by Chalkley and McVicar (2008) examines this question in the contest of a reform in Britain’s National Health Service (NHS). “After 1990 hospitals, which had previously been under the direct control of Health Authorities, could apply for NHS…
Europe is known for having single-payer, government provided healthcare. But just because there is significant government involvement in the financing of medical services does not mean that private hospitals are non-existent. An interesting series of post by HealthcareEuropa looks at private hospitals that operate in Bulgaria, Turkey and Germany.
Why research? It is for the intellectual challenge? Is it to make recommendation policymakers? Or is it to make the world a better place? Margarita Alegria believes that health services researchers must change their focus “from a science of recommendation to a science of implementation.” Dr. Alegria’s address can be found in the upcoming HSR. “The…
Most physicians, public health officials and economists believe that most individuals do not receive sufficient levels of preventive care. Only half of American adults receive all recommended screening and preventive care. The Partnership for Prevention has a plan to increase preventive care utilization. The organization proposes introducing: “..federally funded insurance programs [that] would provide highly…
Everyone knows that health insurance is getting more and more expensive. But how can we measure how expensive it is? A paper by UC-San Diego professors Richard Kronick and Todd Gilmer creates an “affordability index” to measure this. The affordability index is equal to the per-capita, non-elderly health spending divided by the median income. In…
From the researchers at the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care: “Regional differences in Medicare spending are largely explained by the more inpatient-based and specialist-oriented pattern of practice observed in high-spending regions. Neither quality of care nor access to care appear to be better for Medicare enrollees in higher-spending regions.” Fisher ES, Wennberg DE, Stukel TA,…
The latest edition of the Cavalcade of Risk is up at American Consumer News.
Marketplace reports that UnitedHealth Group has just reached a large settlement with the State of New York. What did UnitedHealth Group do wrong? According to the State of New York, it was overcharging patients who went out of the network. The N.Y. Times gives a good example: “The patient might receive a doctor’s bill for $100,…