Are economists dumb?

Maybe so according to Arnold Kling’s askblog, who argues that annuities are not very helpful for many people. Economists think that old people who do not annuitize their wealth are dumb. I decided a long time ago that it is the economists who are dumb. Old people face many risks other than the risk of…

Surrogate Outcomes and the Prentice Criteria

Clinical trials aim to measure how different treatments affect outcomes of interest to patients.  In many cases, however, measuring the ultimate outcomes of interest proves logistically difficult.  For instance, measuring overall survival for some oncology patients may be impractical if survival for the standard of care is long since the required time and expense to…

Links

How accurate are RVUs? Capturing the patient voice. Tools for physicians to find patient copays for drugs. New generic EpiPen hits the market. An honest man. Is Mechanical Turk trustworthy for surveys?

Experts debate Trump drug pricing policies

What will Trump’s “favored nation” policy do to drug prices and innovation? How will 340B reforms affect the price hospitals charge for drugs? Myself and my colleague Jim Baumgardner weigh in with our thoughts in an article in FormularyWatch. “US drug prices will certainly fall. However, prices outside the US will rise,” Jason Shafrin, PhD,…