$1 billion antibiotic venture fund launched

Antibiotic resistance is a problem. One study from Europe found that in 2015 there were 33,110 deaths attributable to antibiotic resistance; accounting for morbidity as well, antibiotic resistance lead to a a decrease of 874,541 disability-adjusted life years. CDC data show that antibiotic resistant bacteria and fungi caused 35,900 deaths in 2019, 12,800 deaths due…

Health care in Ukraine

Recently I read an interesting book called Moneyland by Oliver Bullough. The book describes how with porous borders facilitated by the internet, the rich can evade taxes, hide assets, and basically pick and choose the international legal system most favorable to their interests. One interesting part of the book discusses health care in the Ukraine…

The need for continuous cost-effectiveness analysis

At drug launch, treatments have some benefit and cost. However, drug prices may change over time. Additionally, treatment benefits may rise or fall depending on how well efficacy translates into effectiveness and how well physicians learn to manage adverse events. Mattingly and Love (2020) provide a case study of how cost-effectiveness analysis can change over…

Near/far matching

What is better: propensity score matching or instrumental variables? How about both? That is basically what is proposed using a near/far matching approach as described in Baiocchi et al. (2012). In this paper, they use a two step approach to examine the causal affect of adopting a new treatment–carotid arterial stents (CAS)–versus and older treatment–carotid…