Last Links Post of 2016
A “shadowy crony group”? The real 2016 celebrity deaths. “The GOP isn’t going to repeal ACA.” Economists versus the Economy. Art of the Deal coming to Rx?
Month: December 2016
What is a Pseudo R-squared?
When running an ordinary least squares (OLS) regression, one common metric to assess model fit is the R-squared (R2). The R2 metric can is calculated as follows. R2 = 1 – [Σi(yi-ŷi)2]/[Σi(yi-ȳ)2] The dependent variable is y, the predicted value from the OLS regression is ŷ, and the average value of y across all observations…
Quotation of the Day
I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer. – Jim Carrey
Quality of care and prices
There have been a number of studies that have examined how publicly reporting quality ratings (for health plans, physicians, hospitals or other health care providers) affects market share. Less attention has been paid to the effect of measured quality on health care prices. A paper by Huang and Hirth (2016) aim to answer just this…
Quotation of the Day
I would rather have questions that can’t be answered, than answers that can’t be questioned Richard Feynman
A Christmas present?
Good news reported from the NY Times: In a scientific triumph that will change the way the world fights a terrifying killer, an experimental Ebola vaccine tested on humans in the waning days of the West African epidemic has been shown to provide 100 percent protection against the lethal disease. The vaccine has not yet…
Staying healthy during the holidays
Christmas, Hanukah and Kwanza bring a sense of joy to many. At the same time, the holiday times are often a time of stress as well. There is financial pressure to buy presents for your children, pressure to make Christmas perfect, family members not getting along, etc. These and other challenges around the holidays problems…
Mid-week links
Unified theory of scarcity. Will price transparency cut costs? Potential. Surprise bills. Should academics partner with industry? Giannis!
Are new anti-cancer drugs worth the cost?
The high price of cancer treatment often grabs headlines. But how much have patients benefited from these new treatments. A paper by Howard et al. (2016) look at new cancer treatments for chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), metastatic kidney, breast, or lung tumors and they generally find that the answer is ‘yes’, recent anti-cancer treatments have delivered…
Healthcare Economist makes the top 100
The Healthcare Economist was recently ranked by Feedspot as one of the Top 100 economists blogs. Some of my other favorite blogs such as 538, Marginal Revolution, the Incidental Economist, and the Undercover Economist also made the list.