Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
How did COVID-19 affect mortality rates and how did that vary by racial and ethnic groups? Using January 2011 – April 2020 data from the Census Bureau’s version of the Social Security Administration’s Numerical Identification (Numident) database, a paper by Polyakova et al. (2021) find significantly higher all-cause excess mortality rates for minority groups, particularly…
Should the US have a formal, centralized health technology assessment (HTA) organization? In the United Kingdom, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) plays this roles and has a significant impact on drug pricing in the UK. However, the UK relies on a single payer system and NICE’s recommendations can be directly implemented…
A NBER working paper by Chandra et al. (2021) finds that even small levels of cost sharing have a major impact on pharmaceutical use and mortality. …we show that an as-if-random increase of 33.6% in out-of-pocket price (11.0 percentage points (p.p.) change in coinsurance, or $10.40 per drug) causes a 22.6% drop in total drug…
Cost of care for residential opioid use disorder treatment 2021 Deficit: $2.3 trillion GAO recommendations on the COVID-19 supply chain “recreational marijuana policies were positively associated with opioid‐related hospitalizations” COVID and mental health. A tale of two thresholds. Hedonic vs. capability views on health. Patients at the center of value assessment.
As COVID-19 has made many of us acutely aware, providing high quality mental health care is vital. However, the mental health care market is a difficult one for insurers; there is evidence that uncertainty and variation in treatments are greater compared to physical health conditions (for instance, see Frank et al. 2000). Thus uncertainty and…
Medicare Part D covers prescription drugs for largely elderly Americans in the U.S. Those who qualify for both Medicare and Medicaid receive Part D drug coverage with no premiums and reduced copayments through the low-income subsidy program (LIS). Although federal and state government pays for about 6 out of every 7 dollars of the Part…
Once you start trading for yourself, you start thinking for yourself. Yeonmi Park, escapee from North Korea, author of In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl’s Journey to Freedom
This weekend, my fire alarms kept going off. I called the local fire department who came out and they checked everything out. They arrived quickly, were extremely friendly and explained everything clearly. The did some tests and said all was well. If I were asked to rate their quality, I would rate them very high.…
Budget impact models aim to let payers know how much a new drug will cost them. Clearly, payer cost depends on the dose. Some drugs are dosed the same for everyone. Other drugs are dosed based on patient weight, body surface area (BSA) or other criteria. If you’re a building a budget impact model, how…
What is The birthday rule? EHR kickbacks? Who will be the digital head coach? Why did Haven fail? (one perspective) Is workers’ comp still in the quality-measurement dark ages?