Part D Fun Facts

Some fun facts from Kaiser Family Foundation about Medicare Part D, which covers prescription drugs. Enrollment has doubled since Part D’s inception in 2019. Enrollment in managed care drug plans (i.e., Medicare Advantage Part D Plans [MA-PD]) has continued to grow, but enrollment in stand alone Part D Plans [PDP] has leveled off or decreased.…

What is MCDA and why do we need it?

Value measurement using cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) is one of the core stables of health economic research.  CEA often uses quality adjusted life years (QALYs) to capture how a treatment affects a patients mortality and morbidity.  CEA makes explicit assumptions about the tradeoffs between mortality and morbidity by assuming these are additive.  Further, this approach, however,…

What makes humans smarter than apes?

The answer is not raw brain processing power, but rather it is our ability to learn from others. At least that is the argument from Joseph Henrich’s book The Secret of our Success. Slate Star Codex has an excellent book review. Consider the following graph comparing human, chimpanzee and orangutan intelligence. Another interesting quotation from…

Why did life expectancy fall in Canada?

According to a news report in The Globe and Mail, one of the primary reasons for falling life expectancy in Canada is the opioid epidemic. Life expectancy in Canada has stopped increasing for the first time in more than four decades, due largely to soaring overdose deaths in the Western provinces. In British Columbia, the…