Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
The World Cup tournament began today with a 1-1 tie between Mexico and the host South Africa. The USA’s first game is against England on Saturday. Who will win the World Cup? Using ESPN’s Soccer Power Index (SPI), FiveThirtyEight.com predicts the following tournament favorites: Brazil (21.6%) Spain (15.5%) England (11.7%) Argentina (8.8%) Netherlands (8.7%) According…
If California were to enact a mandate for insurance companies to cover certain services, how much would this cost? How would it affect public health? Would utilization change? To answer these questions, the California legislature charged the California Health Benefits Review Program (CHBRP) to estimate the medical effectiveness, public health and cost implications of proposed…
A “killer” edition of the Health Wonk Review is up at Boston Health News.
In spring of 2009, the federal government passed the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act or CHIPRA. The Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), formerly known as the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) provides health insurance to low income children. Like Medicaid, it is federally mandated, but state run. Some states provide health insurance for…
Health Reform’s effect on marginal tax rates. Health care sector creates one-third of new private sector jobs. Competition, quality and the NHS. Economists on selling organs. Medicare cost/enrollee: +4.4%/year. VA cost/enrollee: +0.3%/year. “The Greatest Ad I’ve Ever Seen“
The Stimulus Package, also known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), key goal was to boost a flagging economy. A number of the provisions in the $787 billion package went towards health care provisions. The Kaiser Family Foundation notes that “the Act includes $149 billion in health spending of which $87 billion is…
Health Reform, also known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), drastically altered the health care landscape. Congress included health exchanges, and individual mandate, and a number of other reforms into the bill. Today, I focus on how Health Reform will affect existing programs which care for the nations poor. In particular, CHIP…
Mentally ill patients receiving appropriate care: <¼. Treating Alzheimer’s. A minimum alcohol price: Will it improve health or increase bootlegging. Evidence-based guidelines using Genomic Medicine. Who’s getting stimulus money for Health IT? Tragedy, Honor and Redemption.
One measure of longevity that may better reflect the quality of a medical care in a country is life expectancy at age 50. According to a recent article in the Penn SAS Magazine (p. 16-p.17) life expectancy in the U.S. for non-smokers is 84.9 for females and 81.2 for males. These figures rank 7th and…
Julie Ferguson of Workers’ Comp Insider takes the helm of the 4th Anniversary edition of the Cavalcade of Risk.