Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
Many of the healthcare reform bills under consideration include an individual mandate. If you don’t purchase health insurance you pay a fee. For the Senate Finance Committee and Senate Health Committee, this penalty would be up to $750. The House Version would assess the fee as 2.5 percent of adjusted gross income over a certain…
A paper written by John Fontanesi and myself was recently published in the October 2009 edition of the American Journal of Managed Care. The paper is titled “Delivering Vaccines: A Case Study of the Distribution System of Vaccines for Children.” The abstract of the paper is below: Objective: To evaluate the efficacy of the central- ization…
Today, Elinor Ostrom of Indiana University and Oliver E. Williamson of the University of California, Berkeley won the Nobel prize in Economics. Dr. Ostrom won “for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons” and Dr. Williamson “for his analysis of economic governance, especially the boundaries of the firm.” According to the N.Y. Times: The…
In his healthcare speech, President Obama cited Intermountain Healthcare in Utah and the Geisinger Health System in rural Pennsylvania as two healthcare organizations that offer high-quality care at costs below average. In Medicare’s Physician Group Practice demonstration project, Forsyth Medical Group in North Carolina and St. John’s Health System in Missouri were able to meet…
The Nobel Prize in Medicine went to Elizabeth Blackburn from the University of California, San Francisco, Jack Szostak from Harvard Medical School and Carol Greider from Johns Hopkins University. The nobel prize was awarded “for work on the existence and nature of telomerase, an enzyme that helps prevent the fraying of chromosomes and is core…
“A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures.” Daniel Webster
The latest edition of the Cavalcade of Risk is up at David Williams’ Health Business Blog.
Indonesia. Indonesia has the fourth largest population in the world and is the country with the largest Muslim population in the world. The island of Bali–where I went for my honeymoon–is the most famous island for tourists. Unlike most islands, it is largely Hindu. Java, where the capital of Jakarta is located, is the most…
Blogger Disclosure Rules. [Don’t worry, the Healthcare Economist does not take any money for endorsements.] Broadway weighs in on health care. Switzerland: universal coverage with private, not-for-profit health insurance companies. $6.6 billion pharmaceutical deal. Problem with many P4P measures: small sample size.
Adverse Selection. The firm wants to attract healthy individuals at all ages. Gym membership may be observable, but it is difficult to observe frequency of gym visits. By advertising at 24-hour Fitness, Kaiser Permanente’s ads have the strongest effect on those who go to the gym most frequently. If fitness enthusiasts decide to enroll at…