Bengt Holmström’s Nobel Prize Lecture
Nobel Prize winner Bengt Holmström talks about the pros and cons of pay-for-performance. Interesting throughout.
Month: December 2016
Friday Links
Does risk aversion change after a health shock. DCE vs. BWS. Does insurance cause high pharmaceutical prices? The latest developments in P4P. Drug prices rise, but ROI falls?
VBID in TRICARE
Value-based insurance design looks to be expanding. As the American Journal of Managed Care reports: The bill calls for a pilot demonstrating the feasibility of incorporating VBID by “reducing co-payments or cost shares for targeted populations of covered beneficiaries in the receipt of high-value medications and services and the use of high-value providers” no later…
The Benefits and Perils of Free Trade
Russ Roberts has a great example demonstrating the benefits and perils of free trade with a health care example. Suppose a scientist invents a pill that once you take it lets you live until 120 with no health issues whatsoever. Once you turn 120, you die a peaceful death on your birthday. Suppose the scientist,…
Advancing Value in Healthcare
Rapid biomedical progress and rising healthcare costs have led to increasing calls to link spending to value rather than volume of care in the United States. These calls have come from payers, patients, providers, and even innovators. For example, Medicare aims to link 90% of payments to some form of value-based reimbursement. Providers-based organizations such…
Can we accurately classify physicians as high vs. low quality?
Medicare aims to tie 90% of reimbursement to quality measures. The potential for quality-linked reimbursement to incentivized improved quality of care, however, depends critically on whether physician quality can be measured reliably. Profiling individual physicians is difficult. Sample sizes are small and attributing patients to a single physician can be difficult (as Mehtrotra et al. 2010…
How we should pay for cures, according to economics
I have an article up at the Washington Post‘s In Theory blog titled How we should pay for cures, according to economics. Imagine a major medical breakthrough: a cure for Alzheimer’s. Imagine that cure not only would improve the cognitive abilities of the more than 5 million Americans living with Alzheimer’s but also would give these patients…
Friday Links
CON laws don’t reduce mortality Why don’t people like pharma companies? Just give ‘em cash. Is value-based purchasing being undermined? Cancer drugs don’t live up to the hype?
Assessing Healthcare Value: The Need for a Decentralized And Scientific Approach
Tomas Philipson has an interesting post in Forbes describe how value should be incorporated into the U.S. healthcare system but should be done in way suited for the American market. The American healthcare system is at a crossroads. Shifting to a system that reimburses based on value, rather than volume, of care requires changes in how we…
Cancer deaths are rising…is that a good thing?
A JAMA Oncology paper estimating the global burden of cancer is getting a lot of attention in the press. The study’s key findings are: In 2015, there were 17.5 million cancer cases worldwide and 8.7 million deaths. Between 2005 and 2015, cancer cases increased by 33% A 33% increase in cancer cases!!! There must be an…