Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
The Research Data Assistance Center (ResDAC) has announced that individuals and firms will now be able to get access to more CMS data. They describe their “Innovator Research” program as follows: Innovators and entrepreneurs may now access CMS data as part of a research study to create products or tools that they intend to sell…
30 Rock has a clever explanation for the benefits and perils of vertical integration. Enjoy. HT: Leemore Dafny during her presentation at USC Schaeffer School.
About two-thirds of Medicare beneficiaires are enrolled in tradiational Medicare FFS, but the remaining thrid is now enrollingin Medicare Advantage plans. Which plans are dominant? The following figure from Avalere provides a breakdown. Note that this figure obscures significant regional variation in plan market share. For instance, Kaiser Permanente has almost half (48%) of the…
That was Amitabh Chandra’s comment on Hillary Clinton’s plan to reign in drug prices and I don’t disagree. According to the N.Y. Times, her plan: …includes regulating the percentage of revenues pharmaceutical companies must spend on research and development, instituting a cap on the cost of many out-of-pocket drugs for chronic and serious health conditions, and allocating…
Can aspirin treat cancer? Google + Udacity offer a Nanodegree. On cardiologists? An effective Alzheimer’s treatment? Should athletes be allowed to dope?
Louise Norris ushers in the change of season with her Fall Colors Health Wonk Review over at Colorado Health Insurance Insider. Check it out.
A post from Ben Casnocha has some really good insights about the pros and cons of being an insider vs. an outsider. I excerpt a parts of the post below: A striking section of Elizabeth Warren’s memoir is about advice she says Larry Summers once offered her: After dinner, “Larry leaned back in his chair and offered…
Outcomes-based risk sharing agreements tie reimbursement for medical goods or services to patient outcomes. Despite the increasing demand from policymakers for value-based payment mechanism, risk-sharing agreements are not that comment. A paper by Garrison et al. (2015) found that there were only 148 risk sharing agreements (RSAs) worldwide between the late 1990s and 2013 and only 18 of the…
Numerous media outlets and academic studies have demonstrated that in the last few decades, income inequality has grown. However, not only are poor Americans making relatively less money compared to their richer peers in recent years, but poor individuals also have not experienced the same survival gains as the rich. Louise Sheiner reports on a…
A JAMA Pediatrics study of children being treated for appendicitis found that “Black children are less likely to receive any pain medication for moderate pain and less likely to receive opioids for severe pain, suggesting a different threshold for treatment.” Aaron Carroll from the Incidental Economist weighs in with his thoughts: