Friday Links
A new fat tax. Ebola: it’s not over. End the employer mandate? Job lock. Penn and Teller on vaccinations.
Month: February 2015
Valentine’s Day HWR
Then Valentine’s Edition of Health Wonk Review: For Health Policy Lovers Everywhere has been posted by Peggy Salvatore at Health System Ed.
Why isn’t there more mental health drug innovation?
There have been a number of efforts emphasize the importance of mental health and put mental health treatments at the same level of respect as physical health. For instance, there was the Mental Health Parity Act of 1996 and also The Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 (MHPAEA) , which: …requires group…
Autism vs. Measles
A powerful article from Medium about an autistic person’s view of the measles debate: No matter what other lofty ideas of toxins and vaccine-related injury anti-vaxxers try to float around in their defense, that’s really what all of this is about: we’re facing a massive public health crisis because a disturbing number of people believe…
Links
How well does Tamiflu work? Does the supply of PCPs affect access to specialist care? Big data and causal inference. Who will deliver health care to Africa? [Hint: Not the US] Illegal libraries. No place for a heart attack.
Kids with 3 parents
No, this is not science fiction. The British Parliament approved a procedure that would permit a new procedure that would allow children to use DNA from 3 parents rather than 2. Here’s why: That insight is why MPs were right to agree, on February 3rd, that Britain should become the first country to allow the…
The downside of EHRs
Electronic Health Records can help doctors access the information they need regardless of whether they have treated you before. Setting up integrated health care systems or systems where EHR networks are interoperable can improve this facility across healthcare organizations. However, this approach is not without risks, as shown by this recent hacking episode at Anthem.…
The Future of Medicine
The next decades of medicine and health care will be about using technologies and keeping the human touch in practicing medicine. Everyone’s genomes will be sequenced to access personalized treatments. We’ll measure almost any health parameters at home with diagnostic devices and smartphones. The 3-D printing revolution will produce affordable exoskeletons and prosthetic devices. Bertalan…
Is 2% US GDP the new normal?
In the past, many economists targeted 4% GDP growth as the long-run average. However, in recent years long-run GDP growth has fallen to about 2% per year. Is the US economic engine slowing down? Maybe, not. Growth in a country’s GDP comes from 2 components: growth in GDP per work and growth in the number of…
What’s wrong with the SGR?
Why are doctor’s always complaining about the sustainable growth rate (SGR) issue? What is the SGR? The Brookings blog has a nice primer on the SGR. What is the SGR Put in place through the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, the SGR is a system designed to control the costs of Medicare payments for physicians.…