Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
A few weeks ago, I reviewed a study that showed that maybe we don’t need Hospital Compare any more. The study found that there was significant overlap between crowdsourced ratings of hospital quality and those on Hospital Compare. However, will the quality of crowd-sourced reviews decline over time? This may be the case if reputation…
A recent report from the Health Care Payment Learning and Action Network (HCP LAN) examines how providers are getting paid in the U.S. today. Traditionally, health care providers (e.g., physicians, hospitals) were paid via fee-for-service (FFS). Fee-for-service means that every time a provider does a service, they get paid. This is truly largely regardless of…
In the book Overcharged, authors Charles Silver and David Hyman identify a number of problems with the current health care system. Third party payment under a fee-for-service system means that providers have an incentive to provide more rather than less care. Further, because the people receiving the services (patients) are not the ones who are footing…
While the high price of branded drugs often gets a lot of attention in the public, few realize that after patent expiration, prices often plunge dramatically and high quality treatments are available for extremely affordable prices. Granlund and Bergman (2018) estimate the size of this price reduction using data from Sweden. In the long term,…
A recent report from Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) found that for about 30 physician administered drugs, prices are 8 times as high as those charged in other developed countries. To address the high prices, President Trump unveiled a three-part plan to reduce drug prices. Under the “international pricing index” proposal, U.S. drug…
There is a lot of hype about digital medicine. Though the definition of what digitla medicine mans varies, many digital devices are able to monitor patient physiology, medication adherence, or other behavior and communicate that with the patient as well as their provider team. One key barrier to having the provider team actually use these…
I ask this question in economic terms. Luxury goods are defined as goods that increase as a share of a person’s (or country’s) budget as income increases; necessity goods are defined as goods that decrease as a share of a person’s (or country’s) budget as income increases. There is actually mixed evidence on the topic…
QuantEcon is an interesting site from some high profile economists advocating for open-source tools for quantitative economic analysis. The organization describes itself on their website as follows: QuantEcon is a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving economic modeling by enhancing computational tools for economists. Our activities include developing and facilitating the development of open source software…
The Second Panel on Cost Effectiveness in Health and Medicine made a number of recommendations of how to improve cost effectiveness analysis (CEA). Yet, CEA is far from “solved”. In a recent article by Neumann et al. (2018), the Second Panel identifies seven CEA areas where additional research is needed. This include: CEA and perspective:…
Is Australia about to cure cervical cancer? The high value of CAR-T. Patient-centered dental home. Drug prices on TV ads. Trial advice for a price.