The Health Wonk Review is up
The latest edition of the Health Wonk Review is up at one of my favorite blogs, Managed Care Matters.
Month: August 2010
Should police departments be privatized?
With state budgets running low, funding for police has fallen. Can private security forces step in to fill the gap? Temple Professor Simon Hakim believes so. “The police is a monopoly. It’s less innovative than the private sector that is under the gun of competition. A police department will never go bankrupt; private company could…
The Favre Double Standard
I am sick of Brett Favre. As a former Packers fan, he used to be one of my favorite football players. Now I can’t stand the guy. I will play; I won’t play; I will play. Urrgh. Today I want to talk about Favre’s “love of the game.” To entice Favre to return to football,…
Mid-week Links
Fraud costs Medicare $60 billion. Mexico to legalize drugs? Doctors with foreign degrees. What is Medication Therapy Management? Health insurance profits surge. My favorite basketball player. Plugging my brother.
Medication Therapy Management
Recently, the N.Y. Times, ran a story on medication therapy management programs (MTMPs). These programs typically involve either face-to-face or over-the-phone sessions between pharmacists and patients in retail stores or clinics. For example, insurance plans pay pharmacists to track patients, monitor cholesterol or blood glucose levels, and prod customers to change their diets or exercise. …
Malpractice in China
In the U.S., physicians often fear that if a patient experiences a bad health outcome, the physician will be liable for millions of dollars as part of a malpractice suit. Although the malpractice system in the U.S. may be far from perfect, most physicians would certainly prefer it over the more informal forms of “malpractice”…
Wage Index Reclassifications
Should Medicare pay hospitals located in New York City more for the same care as hospitals in Montana? Prima facie, one might believe that New York hospitals should receive higher wages since the costs of operating a hospital are much higher in New York. Labor (i.e., nurses, doctors, etc.) may prefer to live in an…
Weekend Links
$26 billion for States (especially Medicaid). Getting rid of tenure. Bending the curve. Better discharge planning and follow-up care don’t reduce readmissions. Why the health insurance industry supported ObamaCare.
How will Health Reform affect State Finances?
How will health reform affect state health care costs? Will reform bankrupt states as some Republicans say? Or will costs be negligible, as Democrats claims? According to a study by Holahan and Dorn (2010) the answer is somewhere in the middle. Most of the additional costs will come from expanding Medicaid to newly eligible population,…
Moral Hazard in Action
About two weeks ago, I was driving to work and a rock from below a car in front of me flew of the ground and made a quarter-sized spiderweb on my windshield. ₣@¢כ!!! Fortunately, my insurance company fixes a windshield for free if the damage is smaller than the size of a dollar bill. I…