Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
On the eve of Martin Luther King Day, let us take a quick look at the impact of COVID-19 by race/ethnicity. CDC reports rates of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths. One can see that cases are higher for most minorities (except Asians) relative to Non-Hispanic Whites, but hospitalizations and deaths are much higher for all…
Health systems have been touted by some to be a cure to many of our health care systems ills by providing integrated, high quality care. Others claim that health systems are just a way for providers to big up prices through more bargaining power. Either way, it is not entirely clear to what extent health…
Pharmacy desserts. Why Israel leads in COVID vaccinations (speculative). Does temperature screening really work? A mRNA vaccine for multiple sclerosis? Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drugs.
Last year, I published a paper that showed that cancer mortality rates fell by 24% between 2000 and 2016 and further that new cancer drugs accounted for saving 1.3 million lives in the US over that time period. At the end of the paper, we noted that these numbers may be conservative since the use…
We know that COVID-19 has increased both mortality and morbidity around the world. But is there a systematic way of estimating the impact of COVID-19 on both mortality and morbidity. A paper by Briggs et al. (2021) proposes one simple solution. They start by creating standard life tables. Life tables are created by estimating the…
It’s not great. From Nelson et al. (2009): Among those who received a first dose of varicella (n = 16 075), hepatitis A (n = 594 917), and hepatitis B (n = 590 445) vaccine, relatively few completed the series (55%–65% for hepatitis B vaccine and 40%–50% for hepatitis A and varicella vaccines in most…
Palau: A leader in health? The Great Bucatini Shortage of 2020. Bayesian fatigue. Illinois to cover undocumented seniors. Excess returns in Rx supply chain?
Victoria Krakovna of LessWrong provides some examples where artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms didn’t work out exactly as planned. In fact, she has put together a master list of these AI issues. Below I have listed some of these examples that are more (or less) related to health: Cancer. AI trained to classify skin lesions as…
Haven was a high-profile effort whereby three industry titans–Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JP Morgan–created a joint venture with the hope of lower costs and improving quality. Today, Haven announced it is shutting down in February. What happened? I don’t know the answer, but below are a few possibilities. Scale. Although these are three large companies,…
What is better: public or private health care systems? This is a difficult question to answer. If we compare the British against the US health care systems, they differ for a large number of reasons beyond just public vs. private. Additionally, one must specify what one means by public vs. private. Is this public vs.…