Tuesday Links
Compensating children injured by vaccines. Healthcare worker shortage in California? The 20 best AER papers average 1.3 numbered equations per page. Hope? Single Payer States?
Month: February 2011
Health Reform’s Value-Based Purchasing Provisions
The Affordable Care Act of 2010 includes a number of provisions to study and/or implement value-based purchasing (VBP) programs in the United States’ health care system. These provisions target Medicare payment policies in particular. Today I review a Robert Wood Johnson (RWJ) article which provides an overview of the ACA provisions related to VBP. There…
A Quotation in Honor of the Oscars
Logue: They’re idiots. Prince: They’ve all been knighted. Logue: Makes it official then. From The King’s Speech
A Dishonest Budget?
The most recent Federal Budget leaves much to be desired. There are spending cuts. The Economist reports that although Mr Obama’s team projects that his budget will cause the deficit will fall “…from a post-war record 11% of GDP in the current fiscal year to 3.1% by 2021. That would stabilise the debt, albeit at…
Patient-centered health spending categories
Where do we spend our health care dollars? A paper by Conway et al. in Health Services Research examines this question using data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) from 2007. Typically, statistics break down health expenditures by payer (e.g., Medicare, Medicaid, private insurance) or setting (e.g., inpatient, outpatient, nursing home). “However, this is not…
Cavalcade of Risk #125
The latest edition of the Cavalcade of Risk is up at Free Money Finance.
Wednesday Links
Is Medicare’s risk adjustment methodology accurate? Wisconsinites don’t like budget cuts. Redd alert. Memory magic. Employer-based health insurance hurts entrepreneurship. The effect of China’s rapid urbanization on health.
A Cohort Framework for Describing Medicare Expenditure Growth
Medicare spending changes over time for multiple reasons. First, for any cohort of individuals, these individuals the age as time passes. As their age increases, expected medical expenditure will also rise. Second, the individual will likely received different medical services as the standards of care change over time. The standards of care can change…
An Alternative to Using Dummy Variables
Oftentimes, researchers use dummy variables to determine how observations classified into different categorical groups affect the dependent variable of interest. One drawback with this approach is using too many dummy variables can create small cell sizes, creating an identification problem. Alternatively, using broad groupings for dummy variables may give the appearance that the effect of…
How to be a good employee
What type of workers does a boss really value? The answer will vary depending on the boss, industry and specific job each worker has. Today we consider one unique group of workers: polar explorers. These men generally value the following in their peers and subordinates: ‘After all is said and done,’ said Wilson one…