Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
Why is it so difficult to get physicians to work together to coordinate care for their patients? Here’s why: “The typical primary care physician has 229…other physicians working in 117…practices with which care must be coordinated, equivalent to an additional 99 physicians and 53 practices for every100 Medicare beneficiaries managed by the primary care physician.”…
“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” Heraclitus, On the Universe.
The “Spring Has Sprung and Mud Still Flung” edition of the Health Wonk Review is up at the always-informative Incidental Economist blog.
Many economists claim that insurance that gives sick people cash to pay for their medical treatments is more efficient than insurance that provides in-kind medical services directly. Although providing in-kind services is more likely to decrease the number of false claimants than insurance that provides cash, cash benefits allow beneficiaries to control how they spend…
Japanese toilets and electricity shortages. California’s priorities: higher education of prisons? Progress on ACOs in Medicare. 1:273. Quality vs. convenience.
Typically tiebout sorting works like this: “Sharofsky does know — very well — about another Cherry Hill [NJ] institution: its stellar public schools. He’s president of the Cherry Hill Teachers Union. Those teachers can brag that 95 percent of the students they teach go on to college. Not bad in one the state’s largest and…
How do ecologists determine the size of a population? One method is the mark and recapture (a.k.a. capture/recapture method). This method relies on having two separate trials to capture (either physically or in data) members of certain population and determines the population size based on the proportion of specimens who are captured in both…
Recent research from Avalere Health, LLC using Medicare Part D reveals some interesting trends. Overall, premiums for fee-for-service prescription drug plans (PDPs) increased by 3%. For beneficiaries who enrolled in a Top 10 plan, however, premiums actually decreased by 6%. This result was driven by a 12% decrease in premiums for the largest PDP, AARP…
“And I tell you, if you have the desire for knowledge and the power to give it physical expression, go out and explore. If you are a brave man you will do nothing: if you are fearful you may do much, for none but cowards have ned to prove their bravery. Some will tell you…
Much of health reform’s efforts has been focused on expanding coverage to those without employer-sponsored insurance (ESI). For instance, the ACA mandated expanded Medicaid eligibility and the creation of a health insurance exchange for those not eligible for a group plan or those who work for small employers. One area of study which has been neglected, however,…