Outcomes-based pricing for Cardiovascular Disease

An interest Health Affairs blog post on outcomes-based pricing from Daniel M. Blumenthal Samuel Nussbaum Neil J. Weissman and Mark Linthicum. Insurers are increasingly tying health service payments to clinical outcomes to improve care value and quality. Outcomes-based pricing—setting treatment reimbursements to reflect their prospectively determined value to patients and the health care system—is a promising alternative payment…

Obamacare premiums rose 32% in 2018

Between 2017 and 2018, premiums Obamacare health insurance plans plans rose by 32%.  To be more specific, the Urban Institute reports that: The national average increase was 32.0 percent for the lowest-priced silver plans and 19.1 percent for gold plans, but the increases varied by states…State changes in average lowest-priced silver premiums ranged from a 22.5…

How Scott Gottlieb is transforming the FDA

The Economist has an article on the evolution of FDA regulation of pharmaceutical treatments.  Brining a drug to market costs billions of dollars.  FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb aims to cut this cost by expediting the drug approval process in three key ways. First, he wants the agency to rethink how much information the FDA demands…

Early Alzheimer’s Diagnosis could save U.S. $7.9 billion

That is the conclusion from a Bloomberg article highlighting some research done by some of my colleagues at Precision Health Economics in conjunction with the Alzheimer’s Association.  An excerpt is below. The Alzheimer’s Association commissioned researchers at Precision Health Economics to study the potential savings of obtaining an earlier diagnosis. It used data from the Health…

Open-Source Publishing

An interesting new approach to academic article publishing as described by Josh Cohen from Tufts University: Open-peer review journals preserve scientific review by conducting reviews after the article’s initial release. Review takes place in the open, with comments and the peer reviewer’s name published online, along with the article authors’ responses and revised manuscript, and…