Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
Daily Kos has an interesting post on what should be the threshold to close a school. A second American died from the swine flu. Hong Kong hotel quarantine. Will the swine flu become drug resistant? Although pork is safe to eat, many people still fear eating products made from pigs. Hog farmers may face significant losses…
For individuals who have recently lost their job, Carolyn’s Blog advises them how to get health insurance coverage. “Unless you have a pre-existing condition you should only stick with COBRA until you find a private health insurance plan. Believe it or not, if you go with a High Deductible Health Care Plan (HDHP) for a…
Four months ago, I wrote that the health care sector added jobs despite the overwhelming job losses in the rest of the economy. Looks like the health care sector has not been fully insulated against the economic woes: ” Six out of ten hospitals nationally are seeing a greater proportion of patients without insurance coming through…
How much of my salary goes to pay for Medicare? What is the difference between Medicare Part A, B, C and D? What is a donut-hole? [hint: They don’t have them at Dunkin’ Donuts] The Incidental Economist has a concise, easy-to-understand three-part series of posts on Traditional Medicare, Medicare Advantage, and Medicare Prescription Drug…
New drugs are (typically) more expensive than old drugs. If a hospital decides to use the latest drug technology, this will increase costs…right? This may not always be the case. If new drugs are more effective than old drugs, then giving patients the new expensive drug may cuts costs in other areas (such as…
The N.Y. Times reports that Social Security benefits will not increase this year. This makes sense on a number of levels. First, over the last year we have been experiencing deflation. The CPI decreased -0.4% between March 2008 and March 2009. Second, wage growth has been negative as well over the past year. Unemployment has…
Watch the relationship between GDP/capita and Life Expectancy evolve over time: Gapminder World.
Obama Budget Cut Visualization. HT: Megan McArdle
Marketplace discusses the uptick in Health IT investment. One reason for the surge is the $19 billion in the Obama stimulus package to encourage doctors to get up to speed using electronic medical records. Will this money be spent effectively? Who knows. I did note last week that 60% of Indian hospitals have HIT compared…