Brewers make the playoffs!

We will pause our regularly scheduled health economics posting to celebrate my home team, the Milwaukee Brewers, making it to the playoffs.  Enjoy some non-health economics related videos.  Regularly scheduled health economics posting will return tomorrow. This is only the beginning. #OurCrewOurOctober pic.twitter.com/8krT1RCOKS — Milwaukee Brewers (@Brewers) September 27, 2018 The best clip you'll watch…

End of life care in China

An interesting article from Longreads on dealing with a grandmother’s terminal illness in China. Guo Zhen didn’t know she had cancer, and my family had carefully devised a strategy to keep it that way. Doctors and nurses in the hospital had been instructed to never speak of her illness in her presence, and visitors to…

Life expectancy declines in the U.S.

In general, one expects progress.  One expects that medical advances will improve life expectancy.  In recent years in the U.S., however, that is no longer the case.  The CDC reports that: …life expectancy at birth decreased in recent years for the first time since 1993. Between 2014 and 2015, life expectancy at birth decreased 0.2…

Do Medicaid discounts increase prices?

A number of people talk about Medicaid “best price”…but what is it really?  StatNews provides a concise overview: The Medicaid best price law, enacted in 1990, requires drug manufacturers to charge the Medicaid program the lowest or “best” price they negotiate with any other buyer and send a rebate check to every state Medicaid department so…

340B Facts and Figures

The 340B program requires pharmaceutical firms to give large discounts to hospitals and clinics that serve high volumes of low-income patients.  This sounds like a good idea at first: give money to people who can’t afford their medicines.  However, when one reads the sentence above closely, it becomes clear that patients don’t receive these discounts:…